The Unbearable Awesomeness Of Being

Wak Wak Wakwakwak

2008-12-12T23:30:00.000-08:00

People that criticize Disney cartoons for being apologetical of capitalist of whatever are seriously missing the psychological depth of the characters. Take Donald Duck, for example. Donald tries to be a working member of society / a good boyfriend / whatever, but the problem is, he's basically incomprehensible. As his own inability to communicate with the world screws him over more and more, he gives up and resorts to the only action he can perform that is understood to the world at large - flailing, wordless rage. This doesn't impress anyone and only serves to make his situation even worse.

There is a small Donald Duck in all of us. (Which is good because if there was a big one we'd explode.)

Infinite HERO

2008-11-12T04:19:00.000-08:00

Infinite characteristics and others for HERO System.

Infinite Characteristics

Infinite STR

A character with Infinite STR can deal out as much damage as he wants to. 5d6, 20d6, 1000d6, doesn't matter. He can also lift any material object and throw it at any distance. His Leaping distance is also infinite (see Infinite Movement)

Infinite DEX

Infinite DEX means a character never fails any DEX or DEX-based skill roll, for any reason. His OCV and DCV are also infinite, which means he'll never miss an attack and can never be attacked directly: Only by area (Remember he can also dive for cover any distance) and 0-DCV attacks.

Infinite CON

A character with infinite CON never gets sick or poisoned, nor stunned.

Infinite BODY

A character that has Infinite BODY is pretty much immortal: No quantity of damage will ever kill him. He can only be stunned or contained.

Infinite INT

Infinite INT grants the character automatic success on all INT and INT-based skill rolls. He never misses any PER rolls either, and can never be fooled by Images.

Infinite EGO

There are probably some cases of this out there. Infinite EGO means immunity to most mental powers: It also means an infinite ECV, so the character will never miss any mental attack.

Infinite PRE

A character with infinite PRE can use as many dice as he wants to in Presence Attacks, and is immune to Presence Attacks and some of the mental powers.

Infinite COM

No idea how that would work, since COM is not used in any rolls. Maybe the character is a visage of transcendental level or something.

Infinite PD/ED

Infinite PD or ED grants the character total immunity to that type of attack, even if Armor Piercing. The difference between resistant and non-resistant still applies, however.

Infinite SPD

A character with infinite SPD may take as many action phases as he wants to in a turn.

Infinite REC

Infinite REC means all STUN, END and BODY is healed whenever the character takes a Recovery. Somewhat strange.

Infinite END

The simplest infinite characteristic to define. A character with infinite END plays as if all his powers use the 0 END advantage. He also may push any stat to the limits defined by the campaign without any ill effects.

Infinite STUN

A char with infinite STUN never gets Knocked Out, although he might be Stunned. Theorically, he could also use as much STUN as he wants in place of END, but that's up to the crazy GM that let a player take this.

Others

Infinite Movement

A Infinite Movement Power allows the character with it to move anywhere he can reasonably reach with that power, at any distance, in a half action.

Infinite Attack Power

A Infinite Attack Power can do as much damage as the character wishes it to. A sensible GM should apply rules for collateral damage generously.

Infinite Skills

A character a infinite score in a skill will never miss a roll on it, no matter how insanely difficult his effort might be. He can use Contortionist to slip under a door or Breakfall to cushion his fall on a bed of spikes by landing with a toe on the tip of one of them.

What Is An Ioun Anyway

2008-10-03T14:40:00.000-07:00

My good friend JDigital has posted a list of D&D ioun stones, those things that can be 'equipped' and orbit around your head. Here I list a few that he missed:

Brass ball - Immunity to fear

Steel cylinder - Acts as immovable rod if held by another person, except it continues to orbit your head

Transparent cube - Keeps beverages on your person cold

Glass eye - 360-degree vision, looks generally creepy

Pulsating red ellipsoid - Whenever you cast a projectile spell, casts a 1st-level version of the spell at the same target

Gray cube - Will never threaten to stab you, and in fact, cannot speak

White octahedron - Allows you to equip one extra ioun stone

Glinting diamond - +2 bling bonus to charisma

Spherical boulder - Is three feet wide, can be used as a rough bludgeon tool

Gray pockmarked sphere - Eventually grows tiny grass, tiny small trees, tiny animals, tiny civilization

Pewter shoe - Gain $200 whenever you pass GO

4th edition rulebook - Lets you shift five feet in one direction

Epic Skillz

2008-08-06T18:37:00.000-07:00

I'm depressed that 4th edition of D&D came out, because now I will never finish the Epic Skill Uses supplement I was working on. According to the Epic Level Handbook or whatever, someone that spent ten thousand ranks on Escape instead of something actually useful could use them to pass through tiny holes, or a wall of force, or those things DMs only throw at you when they're really pissed you defeated their dragon with a rock throw to the forehead. I merely extended the idea to all the other skills that were so woefully ignored. I leave you with a draft of what could be.

Intimidate

The Glare: You can intimidate inanimate objects into doing what you want. DC 40 for things the object can do normally (doors open, wagons move), DC 60 for things the object can't do normally (browbeat a chair into hiding in a corner) or to convince a magic item into using its power.

Jump

Blastoff: For a -25 penalty to your skill, you may jump without moving any muscle - even when tied up or lying down. This includes the -18 penalty for not enough running speed.

Double Jump: You can jump again while in midair. You have a penalty of -20 to your skill for each extra jump. You're considered to keep the original speed you had when you left the ground for DC purposes, but you can change directions with each jump.

Move Silently

Muffle: You can prevent someone else from making noise. DC as usual, plus 10 per extra person, plus target's level + Reflex if they're actively resisting the effect.

Make Noise Silently: You can perform an action that explicitely generates noise (such as ringing a bell or shouting) without unintended parties hearing it. DC 40 for speech-level noise, DC 60 for loud stuff.

Use Magic Device

MacGyver: You can use a magical item as another item of the same type and equal or lower cost. DC 50 for 25% efficiency (uses four times as many charges, lasts a quarter of the time), DC 75 for half efficiency.

Trap Setting: This lets a character set a magic item to trigger, once, by a physical act of some kind (like a door opening or being stepped on) DC 40.

Profession

This was to be the meat of the book. Turn a rock into a delicious dessert, Cooking at DC 50. A Leatherworking roll at DC 60 would let you tan and prepare a hide without removing it from the animal. Roll Stoneworking at DC 80 to make a harmless statue out of a rock a giant's throwing at you.

And so on.

I Dreamed This One Too

2008-08-02T05:26:00.000-07:00

Account Cloning
by Zaratustra

I woke with ten thousand bells inside my head. Four AM. The phone must have turned itself back on with something I said. Cursed first-gen.

"Hello," I subvocalized, still groggy.

"Mick, for god's sakes, I've been trying to get to you all day."

"W... Who is this?"

"It's Jane, Mick. I need your help!"

"... what Jane?"

"'Slept with each other for three years' Jane! Wake up, Mick!"

"OK, OK. I'm awake. What's wrong?"

"Remember the injections we took? You said they'd protect us from all the cloning crimes that have been going on--"

"Yes, the gene locks. So people can't take your cells and use the genes to unlock your bank account."

"Mick, someone did get to my bank account."

"Oh?"

"Mick, I saw her leaving the bank. She looked just like me."

"That's not possible."

"Mick, there's someone that looks just like me and that someone stole four thousand off my account."

"So... someone cloned you, actually cloned you whole, just so they could get some money off your savings?"

"I don't know what they did or why they did it, Mick! That's what I saw and I need your help! The cops don't believe me! Nobody believes me!"

"OK, calm down. I believe you."

"God, Mick, I think I saw her around daycare. If she wants to steal my son--"

"Jane, calm down. Lock the doors and windows, I'll be there in the morning."

"Mick, couldn't you come now? This is--"

"I'll get some things done, first. Things that will help you. Do you trust me?""

"-- OK. Be here at eight?"

"I promise. T.R.Off."

The phone turned itself off.

I looked at the sleeping woman beside me.

"Jane?"

"Mm?"

"I'm glad we got back together, but I think we have to discuss our relationship."

The Slashdot Comments Drinking Game

2008-05-05T06:18:00.000-07:00

The Slashdot Comments Drinking Game is easy and fun. Prepare a bottle of your favorite drink and a small glass, open an item from the Slashdot main news and scroll down to the comments. Whenever you see one of the items below, take a drink. Keep in mind to only read the visible comments (those rated +3 or more), or else you will die.

Examples from here.

A comment inquiring on how this news item is news since it's old/a no-brainer/obvious to anyone

This is done in the tone you used with your mother when you were 15 ("In China, even *Americans* must obey Chinese law! Gee, who would have thought?")

A tired Simpsons/Futurama/Yakov Smirnoff meme (keep in mind someone rated it +3 even though it was used twenty hundred times before)
Comments inexplicably defending the big innocent corporation/country from the mean little bloggers / The 'don't make waves' argument ("You may not like them, for whatever reason. You may think they are inhuman and evil, but they are the law of the land.")
Ad-thumbsitum argument: "If you don't like it, then leave/don't use it/don't do it."
In general, any complaint that you should not complain

As a bonus, the Youtube Comments Drinking Game. Take a drink whenever you see:

Comments consisting of "Doesn't this person have anything better to do with their time" and variations thereof.

Have fun. Don't drink and drive.

How One More Day Could Have Been Done Properly

2008-04-24T02:12:00.000-07:00

(Parker home. Enter PETER PARKER, AUNT MAY and MARY JANE.)
PETER PARKER: I feel somewhat stupid about revealing my identity to the public.
AUNT MAY: Peter, you know I will always support you.
(AUNT MAY is shot and killed by a sniper.)
MARY JANE: And me, too. Also, I'm pregnant.
(MARY JANE is killed by someone. The VULTURE or something.)
(Enter J. JONAH JAMESON.)
J. JONAH JAMESON: Parker, you horrible person! People die because of your existence!
(JJJ is killed by ROCKET RACER.)
PETER PARKER: Mary Jane! Aunt May! Jonah! I rend my garments thus!
(PETER PARKER roams alleys in grief-stricken madness. Enter MEPHISTO.)
MEPHISTO: Parker, you suck.
PETER PARKER: I know. Oh, had I never taken the mantle of Spiderman!
MEPHISTO: Fear not, for I offer you a deal. I'll let you pull back all your fuck ups. Back to the first one.
PETER PARKER: You mean?
MEPHISTO: Uncle Ben. You can go back and not have him killed. And every other stupid thing you did will be revoked.
PETER PARKER: My soul is not enough a price to pay for the lives that have died for me.
MEPHISTO: Pah, I don't want your soul. No price. Just say yes.
(Music comes to a crescendo as PARKER ponders the gravity of the situation.)
PETER PARKER: Oka--
(Flash of bright light. Parker home. Enter UNCLE BEN, PETER PARKER. PARKER has different clothes.)
PETER PARKER: Uncle Ben, I'm home!
UNCLE BEN: Hello, Peter. Have you found a job yet?
PETER PARKER: Uh... not quite yet, Uncle. I'm looking for one, though.
UNCLE BEN: Peter, you're past twenty-five, you don't have a girlfriend and you don't have a job. What would your aunt say if she was alive?
PETER PARKER: I'm sure she'd be as worried as you, uncle.
(Exeunt.)

Man vs. Mega Man

2008-03-28T13:17:00.000-07:00

In case you haven't heard of it, Wikigroaning is defined as such:

First, find a useful Wikipedia article that normal people might read. For example, the article called "Knight." Then, find a somehow similar article that is longer, but at the same time, useless to a very large fraction of the population. In this case, we'll go with "Jedi Knight." Open both of the links and compare the lengths of the two articles. Compare not only that, but how well concepts are explored, and the greater professionalism with which the longer article was likely created.

It's very enlightening. Here are some I've found:

James A. Garfield
Garfield

Monopoly
Monopoly (game)
(best one I've found so far)

Poison ivy
Poison Ivy (comics)

Fraction (mathematics)
Ranma ½

Flight
Flight Simulator

Transparency (optics)
Invisible Woman

Zyklon B
Xykon

Ball
Pokeball

Sparrow
Captain Jack Sparrow

Soprano
The Sopranos

Bean
Mr. Bean

Beowulf (hero)
He-Man

Blight
Dr. Blight

Metamorphosis
The Metamorphosis (Franz Kafka)
Metamorphosis (Hilary Duff album)

MD5
Mega Man Battle Network 5

Scott Kurtz Explains How To Make Webcomics

2008-03-22T23:25:00.000-07:00

Have a bunch of plot holes in your sitcom-derived plot that you were too lazy to handle?

Paint them on a strawman and shoot him with paintballs.

That's quality storytelling, folks. Buy his book.

Sometimes I Wish I Could Throw Up Lava

2008-02-14T12:29:00.001-08:00

"The European Union Commissioner for the Internal Market has today proposed extending the copyright term for musical recordings to 95 years. [...] ... People are living longer and 50 years of copyright protection no longer give lifetime income to artists who recorded hits in their late teens or early twenties, he said.'"

Imagine someone discovers the cure for death tomorrow. Maybe he researched chemical compounds for thirty years, maybe he just mixed a couple of cleaning agents on his kitchen and drank it. Either way, he cures death. Assume he patents this procedure and it is distributed to every human being so nobody would ever die again. He has created the greatest thing ever known by humanity. For how long he and his family will be allowed to profit from it?

Answer: Twenty years.

Meanwhile do you have any idea who gets money when you buy a re-re-mastered version of "Imagine", nearly thirty years after John Lennon died? Because I don't.

Le Demographie

2008-02-07T23:07:00.000-08:00

One of the main things that made Psychonauts unpopular, I feel, is that the cover art of a kid in goggles just didn't appeal to its 20-25 demographic. To help future endeavors of Tim Schaefer and other fellas of the trade, I'm making a list of main videogame characters proper for each demographic:

Male
9-12: Furry animal with 'tude
12-15: Burly guy
15-18: Busty girl
18-21: Special ops secret ninja from NASA
21-24: Burly guy or busty girl in period clothing
24-30: Chubby plumber
30-50: L-piece
50+: Sudoku grid

Female
9-12: Furry animal with sparklies
12-15: Dog, horse, girl with dog or horse
15-18: Mix between reality show contestants and Barbies
18-50: Girls this age don't play videogames so just put busty girls in or something
50+: Mii

Hooray For The Person Of The Year

2008-01-30T15:55:00.000-08:00

Google removed Youtube's Add To Groups functionality in October 2007.

I know this because it was the last date anyone that isn't me added a video to my Youtube Group. I don't blame them.

For those of you that only care about Youtube as a way to embed videos on your blogs, the groups are a way for multiple users to contribute to a single playlist.

Before the removal of the Add To Groups link, the process involved three clicks from the main Youtube video page:

1) Click on Add to Groups
2) Click on the group you want the video added to
3) Click on OK

The process was done automatically without leaving the page you're on. Now, adding a video requires at least ten clicks and a happy jaunt through eight pages.

1) click on Add to Favorites.
2) click on what favorites list you want to add it to.
3) click on OK.
4) click on your username to go to your Profile page. (page 2)
5) click on Groups to go to your Groups page. (page 3)
6) click on the group you want to add the video to. (page 4)
7) click on Add Videos. (page 5)
8) click on the playlist you want to get the video from. (page 6)
Optional step: more than 10 videos in that playlist? start clicking 'next'. No, there is not a 'last' button. (pages 7, 8, 9...)
9) click on the checkbox next to the video you want to add.
10) click on Add Video. (one more page because this certainly does not use ajax)

This if you started from the standard page - an embedded video requires three more clicks and a paste operation. And, of course, people can't subscribe to updates from groups, as opposed to personal playlists. This from a site that calls itself Web 2.0.

Actually, this is very in the Google spirit (don't put complicated things in the interface that might take time off you coding neat things) and in the Web 2.0 spirit. Web 2.0 is about two things:

Gather information from everyone to yourself;
Send information from yourself to everyone.

Any way to do projects in groups smaller than infinity is unsupported. del.icio.us is firmly plugged into your Google username. The 'communities' of social networking sites have a badge for you to display in your page and maybe a little 4chan-style message board for people to shout at each other, without any meaningful organization.

Web 2.0 is all about you. Maybe web 3.0 will be about us.

The Infinite Perfect Rock Paper Scissors Game

2007-10-18T22:50:00.000-07:00

With the advent of RPS-101, a Rock-Paper-Scissors-like game with more than a hundred (a hundred and one, actually) gestures, humanity has been left asking if that is the limit. Well, I am happy to tell you, it isn't. I present to you, RPS-∞, the game with infinite gestures!

A round of RPS-∞ works like this:

The players both count aloud to three, each time raising one hand in a fist and swinging it down on their other palm on the count.
On the third count, each player makes whatever gesture they want, and names it ('Heat Death of the Universe', 'Strawberry Icecream', 'Wu-Tang Clan').
If both make the same gesture, it's a draw. Otherwise, they discuss what would be the most concise outcome to a match between both items (usually expressed in terms of X verbs Y)
If the last step ended in confusion or fisticuffs, it's a draw. Go for another round.

There are many strategies you are sure to find out with practice. Share the best ones here!

The F It Project

2007-10-06T23:49:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine asked me to make a game for her birthday based on her story. The story is about a girl that kicks ass and chews bubblegum, but is sadly out of gum. I thought I could not rise to the challenge, but after a couple of stiff drinks I got an amazing idea.

You are Friday, a biological weapon capable of killing pretty much everything. Face your enemies and defeat them!

Your way is blocked by...

The World Is Not Ready For Me, Part VII

2007-09-25T13:26:00.000-07:00

The masters class at college rejected my attempt to redo their T-shirt design, partly because of bafflement and, yes, fear, and part because I am lazy and delivered it too late.

Their current T-shirt is something like this:

While my concept was more like this:

There's a Hole In My Hole

2007-08-28T11:53:00.000-07:00

An empty space one billion light years across has been found in space! It is a phenomenon unexplainable by the science of Man! It gets even more confusing because news are calling it a 'hole' and 'black hole', which it isn't - a black hole a billion light-years across would be reason to start the death of civilization on this very minute. It's merely a space that's emptier of stuff than regular space is - a kind of space desert or space abandoned warehouse.

But what would cause such a thing, you're asking - or, for the purpose of the discussion, we'll assume you're asking? Here are some theories:

A Type IV civilization decided to take its neighborhood into an alternate universe, hyperspace, virtual space or whatever;
The same kind of civilization, except their equivalent of a gasket exploded;
It's a signal by aliens. Radio signals are cool, but a crop circle a billion light years in size can't be missed.
Galactus decided to raise a family.

Sadly, there's not much use to speculation: The bugger is more than -six- billion light-years away, which means what we're seeing is six billion years old. What could be there right now? The possibilities are endless:

Parking lot
McDonald's
Starbucks
Used car dealer
Those atrocious parking lots with the huge department stores around them
Starbucks across the street from Starbucks
Nothing, but the whole thing is covered in plastic
Another Type IV civilization fiddling with gaskets

A Moral Dilemma

2007-08-07T19:41:00.000-07:00

A trolley car is careening down the track towards a railroad tie. Tied to one of the tracks there is Baby Hitler (who will grow up to be Hitler) and a man who knows the cure for cancer. On the other there are five people swimming, a shark and a baby who will invent a health pebble that can either ressurrect five people or cure the common cold. The train's passengers are baby Stalin, a man who knows the cure to gonorrhea, and Richard Simmons. What do you do?

Questions About Superheroes

2007-08-05T23:19:00.001-07:00

Many women in comicsland have parthenogenetic births (Power Girl, Ms. Marvel: check Wikipedia if you don't believe me). Which brings the question - Why Pre-Crisis Superman couldn't do it? He could do pretty much everything else.
Why only Native American superheroes can summon animal totems? You never see a white trash kind of guy siccing giant raccoons on people.
Why isn't there a Batman movie that features King Tut as the main enemy?

Videogames & Art - Canto II: Interactivity

2007-07-19T12:31:00.000-07:00

"Cut-scenes. Are my fingers cold and dead? Then why have you pried control away from me?" - Rabscuttle, Caravel Forums

Pretty much every videogame can be divided into interactive and non-interactive sections. It used to be that, given the constraints of the system, the non-interactive parts of the videogame would be totally shunted off the digital representation and into a manual or book. These days, making a 'good game' practically demands having a 'good story', and a 'good story' demands long exposition and action the player cannot affect.

Having non-interactive bits is generally reviled by gamers. But therein lies a trouble: the interactive part of a videogame usually connects directly to the fast-thinking bits of the brain - your thinking meat is specially designed so that things that require quick response have a shorter path to go around.

When you're busy fleeing for your life is not the time to enjoy the landscape. In fact, a lot of very good games (Tetris comes to mind, as it always does) require you to reach an almost zen-like emptiness of thought, to become reflex and dance with the machine. You could call it 'art for the reptilian brain', and it's something other art forms don't explore as much - except for the physical ones, such as dance or judo.

If you place a non-interactive section in the middle of the action, you're forcing a breather on the player. Good artists know that this must be done carefully - buildup, climax, respite, repeat. Deal your emotional cards wrong, and the player will be frustrated and annoyed, mashing the A button to skip past. (Xenosaga players expecting to actually play will be particularly frustrated.)

Half-Life 2 solved this by having the story play around you as the less-taxing action happened, such as walking around a city with no enemies in sight or being carried by a coffin-on-a-rope - a kind of low-impact cutscene, like having a stock market-like story ticker playing on the bottom of the screen. This keeps the player immersed, pulling from active to passive mode more-or-less naturally, and gives him the chance to appreciate the scenery he was just killing dozens of faceless soldiers on.

Final Fantasy cares about the artistic power of its interactive portion as much as it cares about the artistic power of a pachinko machine. The Attack-Magic-Item menus are merely a vessel to convey the grand epic storyline of the evil empire that uses magic to control the world and the angsty teenagers that fight it. Sometimes a cutscene stops for a battle, or having the ultimate sword of power opens a secret movie, but it feels less like a cohesive whole and more like exchanging tickets for teddy bears.

Note that I haven't discussed yet the ability of a player to actually affect the game world, which we might call 'affectability' until someone comes up with a better term. We'll get back to it sometime.

Many Releases

2007-06-27T14:58:00.000-07:00

Zeta's World is now for sale. It's a makeover of my old Zeux's World game, with some extra bonuses for people that played it already. If you like platformers of the 8-bit school and think games these days are just too easy, be sure to check it out!

On other news, for those of you that care about more adult themes, Breeders has been updated as well. I suppose it lost some of its simplicit charm, but frankly I think I was the only person that cared about that.

Ramblings On Love & War

2007-06-24T14:03:00.000-07:00

Howard Tayler, The creator of Schlock Mercenary, removed an ad from his site because it contained explicit images of couples having sex because it might affect children.

Oh wait, my bad, I didn't link to the blog post. I linked to one of his strips where a guy is very visibly cut in half by a laser. Here it is.

According to the man himself:

Pictures of naked people and pictures of naked people engaging in sexual acts DO incite lust.
Graphic violence does desensitize us, to some extent, to violent acts, but even then it lacks the ability to charge us the way pornography does. Repeated exposure to porn insidiously re-wires the pleasure centers so that the victims find themselves LESS able to enjoy a loving relationship.

The insidious porn will change your brains so that you might never love again.

I'd like to see the research that produced both of the results above (you can easily find research that proves or disproves either of the affirmations above, provided you don't look too hard into how they produced it. It's like quoting the Bible.) but on the meantime I'm trying to understand the logic that would get to this. Let's read on.

In order to program someone to be a killer, you have to work pretty hard at it. [...] In order to program someone to be unable to have a healthy, loving relationship you can achieve a high measure of success by just feeding them a steady diet of pornography for a few formative years.

OK, so the insidious porn will change your children's brains. Why? Because they will expect relationships to have sex in them. And that's not what healthy loving relationships are about. Healthy loving relationships are about doing what society expects of you, marrying, raising children, sending them to college, then divorcing and marrying a 20-year-old blonde airhead.

This is just an example. My parents are married and happy. I have a livejournal to complain about my troubled past if I so wish.

There's a percentage of the population that simply will not fit on what box you try to educate them into. You can guide their development to a degree, but eventually they'll fly off with only part of the baggage - And when they go, they might be attracted more to the guns and bombs than to round things of a softer nature.

I realize I'm probably shouting to a wall here. I'm just saying - America spends more on guns yearly than it does on sex. And still you were attacked by people that thought you weren't puritan enough.

Clinton spent eight years in charge and the most memorable thing he did was bone an intern of legal age. Maybe everyone could follow his example.

Videogames & Art - Canto I

2007-06-04T20:34:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to coalesce my ideas into a single article, but it's not working. I'll spit what I have here then come back for it later.

"[There is] no conveyance of ideas, expression, or anything else that could possibly amount to speech. The court finds that video games have more in common with board games and sports than they do with motion pictures." -- U.S. District Judge Stephen N. Limbaugh Sr.

Are videogames art? Game players may think the question is stupid, as well as their mothers - for entirely opposite reasons. The answer is probably different for every person, not just of videogames but of pretty much every item of art or non-art ever made.

The real matter is - why videogames are not recognized as possible artistic endeavours? One of the reasons, of course, is because most of them are pretty crappy artistic endeavours.

Scott McCloud posits in Understanding Comics that there are six layers to an artistic endeavor:

Surface - The layer of first efforts and fan games where SUPER MARIO FIGHTS SONIC OMG. It's OK, we all started here.
Craft - The level of making the trees look good: For example, your levels and enemies look nice individually, but they don't glom into a full view.
Structure - Where you start noticing the forest and making it a cohesive whole. Your features aren't just good in themselves, but they connect and follow in a meaningful way.
Idiom - The layer where you find your own style and firm it across the whole of your work.
Form - One of the two 'inner' layers. Having all other layers mastered, you can use them to rework the limits of your craft.
Idea/Purpose - The other 'inner' layer. All other layers are a tool to convey what you -really- have to say.

There are few gamemakers that really work from the bottom two layers. Shigeru Miyamoto certainly is a Form fellow: the very controllers of Nintendo consoles change and reform to his will. The only Idea gamemaker I can think of at the moment is Fumito Ueda (ICO, Shadow of the Colossus), though Hideo Kojima seems to be trying really hard to get to this.

I'm trying really hard to put Half-Life 1 or 2 or 2.1 on this, but frankly, it seems like they're less of an art effort and more of a new graphic/physics engine with attached movie. Granted, it's a very pretty movie. Something to think about.

So, some of the points to be ponderous upon:

The relatively young age of the videogame industry
How important is tech glitter
Group production vs. single person production
Mass culture phenomenon, sequels and trequels
Interactive and non-interactive content and how they connect
Whether board games and puzzles are art

I'll expound on those as they occur to me.

A Ruby Quirk

2007-05-31T22:28:00.000-07:00

# $ denotes global variables in Ruby. def function() $number += 1; $number += 2; $number += 3; return 4; end $number = 0; $number += function();
Problem: What is in $number at the end of this code?

Answer (select to see): 4. the command at the end unfolds to '$number = $number + function()', then '$number = 0 + function()' before it executes function().

Yes, 'Lost' Is A Repeat Offender

2007-05-20T15:19:00.000-07:00

Cultural References that Movies, TV Shows and Videogames Are Not Allowed To Make Until 2050
(Seriously Give It Some Rest Already)

Alice In Wonderland - Includes white rabbits, holes with magical lands inside, disappearing cats and mad hatters.
Chess - Yes chess is a metaphor for life/war/love we know it. Double-verboten if the villain plays it and holds up pieces meaningfully while diatribing.
Judeo-Christian nomenclature and imagery - Includes naming characters Zachary, Jacob, Abraham, Moses and whatever. Also calling your giant space laser the Tetragrammaton is a no-no.
Greek-Roman mythology - Is kind of losing proeminence these days. Mostly because real world corporations already love to use this stuff, but haven't gone yet all the way and made a real Hades Corporation. (edit: I was wrong)
Alice Through the Looking Glass - Includes any form of going through mirrors. Cumulative with 'Chess' above. Seriously, there are other books.

Wish You Were Here

2007-05-10T18:30:00.000-07:00

Board Games Final Mix

2007-04-26T11:13:00.000-07:00

This is an embrionary idea that was posted in another blog, but it didn't get comments for six months so I'm posting it here. (Yes I know I don't get comments on stuff here either) It was derived from the idea of grabbing all tokens and cards and whatever from every board game you have around and playing them all together.

In this you’ll be taking two board games and playing them at the same time.

* Rules of each board game are mostly unchanged. You’ll only be adding rules for the interactions between the two games.
* In your turn, you play a turn for each of the mixed games in any order.
* If you win one of the games you win the mixed game. This may change if it proves problematic.

Magic X Settlers of Catan

* Hold your Magic and Settlers cards together. (You could even use proxies and/or cover them with card protectors so they’re all alike.)
* If played as Magic cards, Settlers cards have special rules as written below.
* You can trade Magic/Settlers cards as per the Settlers rules, for either cards in your Magic library or Settlers trade items (I.E. two wheat, one mountain and one Dark Ritual to the bank in exchange for one sheep)

And here are the rules Settlers cards are considered to have if played as Magic cards: They all cost 0 mana to play.

Timber: Green Sorcery. Generate two green mana.
Ore: Black Sorcery. Generate two black mana.
Sheep: White Sorcery. Generate two white mana.
Wheat: Blue Sorcery. Generate two blue mana.
Brick: Red Sorcery. Generate two red mana.
Knight: 2/2 Colorless creature, cost 0.
Road Building: Search your deck for a Land card and put it on play, shuffle your deck afterwards.
Invention: Draw three Magic cards.
Monopoly: Colorless sorcery. Name a card. All players must hand you all cards with that name they possess.

Cranky Kong Was The Donkey Kong From Earth-2

2007-04-22T14:42:00.000-07:00

This is the canon timeline as it exists after Crisis in Infinite Captain Ns.

62 Years Ago: Mario Sr. is born in Brooklyn. Along with his brother Luigi Sr., he performs jobs as a construction worker, where he often has to fight Donkey Kong Sr. and rescue a woman named Pauline. (Donkey Kong, Wrecking Crew, Game & Watch games)

41 Years Ago: Donkey Kong Jr. frees his father from Mario Sr.'s clutches. (Donkey Kong 2)

40 Years Ago: Mario Sr. discovers a network of pipes that leads to the Mushroom Kingdom. (Mario Bros.)

38 Years Ago: Mario Sr. and Pauline are wed and move to the Mushroom Kingdom.

36 Years Ago: Baby Bowser is born. (Yoshi's Island)

35 Years Ago: Mario Jr. and Luigi Jr. are born to Mario Sr. and Pauline. (Yoshi's Island)

34 Years Ago: Wario and Waluigi arrive from the Anti-Matter Mushroom Kingdom. (Yoshi's Island 2)

15-12 Years Ago: Mario Jr. and Luigi Jr. save the Mushroom Kingdom repeated times. (Super Mario Bros., Super Mario World, etc)

11 Years Ago: Mario Jr. and Luigi Jr. have a falling apart and go their separate ways. (Mario Sunshine, Luigi's Mansion)

9 Years Ago: Mario Jr. builds a castle to live with his bethroted, Princess Peach. He encounters Wario for the first time and fights him to a standstill. (Super Mario Land 2)

8 Years Ago: Luigi Jr., disguised as his brother, saves Princess Daisy. (Super Mario Land)

5 Years Ago: Mario Jr. finishes his doctorate and dedicates himself to philantrophy. (Dr. Mario, Mario Teaches Typing, Mario's Time Machine)

3 Years Ago: Mario Jr. goes missing in a mission to africa. Luigi Jr. comes out of retirement to rescue him. (Mario is Missing)

2 Years Ago: Mario Jr. and Luigi Jr. reconcile and decide to reform the team for charity competitions. (Mario Party, Mario Tennis, Mario Strikers, etc)

10 Years In the Future: Mario Jr. is called to a higher duty. He ascends to the heavens and is never seen again. (Mario Galaxy)

GODZIRRA

2007-04-04T21:21:00.000-07:00

I think the reason most people hated the American Godzilla movie wasn't that Godzilla looked weird or that it was a girl, it was mostly that it was beat by a cast of characters that look like they couldn't brush a lizard off their vase of flowers. Let's look at the main characters and see how replacements would improve the movie.

Role: Biologist With Expertise in Radiation-Mutated Lifeforms
Actor: Matthew Broderick
Best Known As: Ferris Bueller
Suggested Replacement: Kiefer Sutherland
Ideal Scene: Discovers where Godzilla eggs are hidden by going down into sewers and shooting rats on knees

Role: Plucky Young Female Reporter
Actress: Maria Pitillo
Best Known As: Cute Girl In Afternoon Sitcoms For Women In The 30-45 Demographic
Suggested Replacement: Charlize Theron
Ideal Scene: Kills Godzilla-spawn with high heel in the brain; turns around sexily and says some catchphrase or something; Godzilla-spawn explodes

Role: Rude Cameraman
Actor: Hank Azaria
Best Known As: Chief Wiggum
Suggested Replacement: Samuel L. Jackson
Ideal Scene: 'We got motherf-cking Godzillas in this motherf-cking stadium!'

Role: Foreign Guy
Actor: Jean Reno
Best Known As: Foreign Guy
Suggested Replacement: Jason Statham
Ideal Scene: Grabs Godzilla-spawn by tail, spins it around, uses it to beat other Godzilla-spawns

Role: Military Commander
Actor: Kevin Dunn
Best Known As: 'Joel Hornick, Jerry's overzealous childhood friend, in the Seinfeld episode "Male Unbonding".'
Suggested Replacement: Chuck Norris
Ideal Scene: Chuck gets shot out of an airplane's bomb hatch; hits Godzilla, Godzilla dies

Things Will Never Be The Same

2007-04-02T12:01:00.000-07:00

Those in the audience that don't read many comics probably don't know or don't care that everything is about to change. That's right, the big comic-making corporations are ushering in an entire new age of comics! So you can understand the importance of this, let's see what the previous ages of comics entailed.

Golden Age (Pre-WW2): Superheroes in Phantom Of The Opera costumes with magical or scientific or whatever artifacts which all gave them the same power - the power to punch hoodlums and cutpurses on the face and other sensitive areas while spouting old school catchphrases. Time for a nap, old bean! POW! Hoho!

Electrum Age (WW2 Era): As above, but now mainly punching Hitler and Japanese people (or yellow bucktoothed facsimiles thereof). Hitler was being punched in the guts, like, weekly.

Silver Age (60s): All Golden Age heroes are revamped to get powers from Science or Space. They're all scientists or cops (or scientist cops). Family values prohibit comics from showing any form of sex or violence, giving us about twenty years of Batman dressing as a candy cane and Superman with ant head and etc, providing internet blog sites material for megabytes of postings. On Marvel, Jack Kirby writes and draws every issue of every comic for twenty years.

Bronze Age (70s): Comics become hella street. Superheroes become junkies, evil, evil junkies and soforth. Many go off in funky colored buses to find America. Supergirl and Gwen Stacy and some other women die. Wolverine appears and gets his own series, in a trend that continues to this day.

Iron Age (80s): Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen build the idea that comics can be serious works. This lasts for about two weeks. We get Sandman and Swamp Thing out of it though. Crisis on Infinite Earths and Secret Wars begin the concept of the Big Summer Event, which eventually will occupy the entire year and a few months of the years to each side.

Tinfoil Age (90s): Dear god X-Force and Spawn and everybody is drawing with a knife for a pen and everyone's gritting their teeth all the time and have really small feet and I swear their muscles have muscles of their own argh. Superman dies then comes back with a mullet and also grimaces all the time. Batman is replaced with a kid with a magic skateboard that grimaces a lot, I think. The kid, not the skateboard. This goes on for ten years, when both readers and artists finally find out breasts don't work that way.

Candy Wrapper Age (2000s): Everything is new again! Actually, everything is old again. Why? Because we have to make movies of this stuff, folks. So basically every big superhero reviews his origins and stuff like that so people that just started reading don't have to think too much. Many perky teenage girl versions of superheroes appear and are quickly killed or worse. Meanwhile, the hardcore readers can read the company-wide crossover events, featuring serious debates on rape and children being eaten alive. Haha, kidding! Only on the serious debate bit, actually.

Also, Nextwave gets cancelled. Probably because they can't make a movie of it.

Art 2.0

2007-03-20T19:59:00.000-07:00

First Art - Architecture
Second Art - Sculpture
Third Art - Painting
Fourth Art - Music
Fifth Art - Dance
Sixth Art - Poetry
Seventh Art - Cinema
Eighth Art - Radio Or Television
Ninth Art - Comics

Tenth Art - Cat Pictures
Eleventh Art - Lambada, The Forbidden Dance
Twelfth Art - YTMND
Thirteenth Art - Tool-Assisted Speedruns
Fourteenth Art - Ringtones
Fifteenth Art - War
Sixteenth Art - Videogame Sprite Webcomics
Seventeenth Art - Videogames Depicting Controversial Real Life Events
Eighteenth Art - Funny Lists

I Think SimCity Encourages Communism

2007-03-20T10:38:00.000-07:00

Another research points to playing driving violent games leads to bad driving. Because, you see, violent driving games gives you thoughts of crashing cars and running over pedestrians, and as previously demonstrated, thoughts lead to deeds. I'm not making fun of the article, that's exactly what their logic is.

I used to be heavily against this kind of thinking, but now that I've given it some thought, I can say that, yes, videogames are responsible for the evils of our society. In fact, I've been able to trace every problem of the 21st century world to a videogame released in the 80s.

Obesity -> Burger Time

Alcoholism -> Tapper

Bomb Threats -> Kaboom, H.E.R.O.

Grafiteering, Violence Against Monkeys -> Amidar

Vandalism Against Buildings -> Tetris, Lode Runner

Arson -> Super Mario Bros.

Prejudice Against Illegal Aliens -> Space Invaders

Necrophilia -> Pac-Man

War -> River Raid, Missile Command

Dawdling on Highways -> Frogger

General Shenanigans -> Custer's Revenge

Lack Of Faith In God -> E.T.

Extreme Rocking Beyond This Point

2007-03-17T17:33:00.000-07:00

Tenser Said The Tensor and Thor report on the new radiation symbol and complain that it still doesn't do the proper job - warning people that don't understand what it means that it is dangerous.

Thinking of that, I've designed an even more enhanced version of the radiation symbol, one that will truly communicate the awesome forces and danger hidden behind this sign:

Z. Tustra. Complaining Of Academical Papers. Blogspot, 2007.

2007-03-11T17:00:00.000-07:00

On my road towards getting a masters degree and becoming unusable for anything but academical work, I have to read a -lot- of academical papers. For those of you who never had the pleasure to browse one of these, they're almost like your Wikipedia pages, except they're not about Pokemon characters and have a few differences in appearance:

They're not available in friendly formats. This is because LATEX, the language of choice to make academical papers, doesn't export well to HTML. It mostly exports to, uh, PS. You know, Postscript. Never seen that? Paint Shop Pro can open it after a couple of hours, or Google can translate it to an unreadable HTML page for you. The other format it exports to, which most scholars abhor, is PDF. Web 2.0 terrain here, people.

Also, most of the time they're not available at all. They're often released in academic periodicals, which then keep the articles for themselves and don't give them to you unless your school paid like twenty million dollars to them. This can be bypassed by going to the page of each author and praying that they keep a copy there. Which will be in Postscript.

Third, these papers have citations. Many of them, more so than even Wikipedia articles, even those with Simpsons references. Citations are the precursor and antithesis to the hyperlink, in that they tell you who wrote something, the title, year and place of publication, and don't tell you -where- it is. Refer to the previous point as to how to acquire actual publication. Repeat this five times per article read.

I know, it's not causing global warming or killing children in Africa or anything. I'm just surprised that, in a network created to disseminate scientific information, with millions of people yapping every day on how 'information should be free' (information being mostly the contents of their iPods), I have to understand the sum of all terrestrial scientific knowledge through the digital equivalent of a peephole.

Crawling From The Wreckage

2007-02-17T10:17:00.000-08:00

A series of good comics has appeared in the last year or couple of years, hidden in the shades of the ruins of Keenspot, and don't receive nearly the amount of attention they deserve. Let's give them a small light.

Minus is a comic about a little girl with the power of God. Kind of a cute watercolor Peaksville.

Bang Barstal tells the story of a man in post-Apocalyptic (not merely post-apocalyptic) America who wields Excalibat.

Gone With The Blastwave reflects the endless fighting of differently-colored videogame-like armies.

Dresden Codak has absolutely beautiful art and an absolutely implausible protagonist - a pretty nerdy girl that can't find a date.

Gunnerkrigg Court has robots. And griffins, I think. Not robot griffins.

And, finally, XKCD shows you don't need good art to make terribly nerdy jokes.

Stories Have Many Layers

2007-02-05T18:50:00.000-08:00

I received a story as an email. I'll transcribe it as best as I can here because I'm too lazy to undredge it.

A girl was blind and was really sad about it. She kept complaining to her boyfriend that her life was not worth living and she was not worth being loved because she was blind. One day she got the news - There was an eye donor! She got new eyes, and the first thing she saw was her boyfriend, who bravely had removed his own eyes and given them to her. Then the boyfriend killed himself because she had said blind people were not worth being loved.

Now, what kind of person you are defines what you'd think after reading this story. People of a more romantic bent might think something like:

Oh my god, this is so true and so sad. People should see the good things in their lives and not complain of the bad ones.

Then again, they might be more of a cynical outlook. They might be thinking.

Man, there is no way no guy would ever do that for his girlfriend. And then kill himself after? That's retarded. And who the hell does eye transplants anyway?

It's a valid outlook, I'm not complaining. Each person can get their own meaning out of this story. But what I got out of it, as a person, was:

Why the hell didn't he give her just one eye?

She Saw Saw By The Seashore

2007-01-22T13:32:00.000-08:00

So, they're going to make yet another Saw movie. I checked a list of traps featured in the previous Saw movies, and as a RPG player, I started to worry: will they be able to keep up the quality of trap they've featured on the last four movies? Which is why I've made this small program, capable of generating hundreds of grim, gritty ironic traps for parents to bring their ten-year-olds to watch in action.

The victim wakes up...

Another Dream I Had

2007-01-14T18:57:00.000-08:00

I dreamt I stuck my foot in the door of the Space Shuttle and got in at the last moment. But, before we took off, we went driving around to refuel and hit on chicks.

Apparently, my sole research work at the shuttle was to look out the window and report if I saw any flying sleighs pulled by reindeers.

My only memento of the trip was a transparent box with some hair strands. There was also a Hello Kitty figure in there for some reason.

I Think One Of Them Apologized To The Car's Ex-Driver

2007-01-01T14:41:00.000-08:00

At the beach, in a lan house.

Three seats from me, two six-year-olds are playing Vice City. Their parents are nowhere in sight.

It's Rockstar's fault, of course.

A Runner-Up is You

2006-12-08T08:37:00.000-08:00

I'm a runner-up.

I guess that wasn't so bad, given it's my first actual foray into Flash, I didn't actually -try- all that hard and it's certainly better than the time I got 22nd place in the Retro Remakes competition. Still, I'd like to have earned something instead of the right to give some moneys to Mousebreaker. Yeah I'm the kind that always wants first place, I was insufferable in school.

Still, I'm glad my game is the only one in that page without a black or urine yellow background.

The Game of the Decade

2006-11-09T13:19:00.000-08:00

Discovering underlying patterns is one of the greatest abilities of the human brain. Using this, I have played every game made in every decade, and built a list of what comprises the Archetypical Videogame of that decade - and what, inevitably, shall follow:

1970s:

* A glowing dot that moves to the sides as the player operates a rotary controller

1980s:

* A single static graphic where generic aliens move around
* A progressively increasing number, called the 'score'. As it increases, the player is presumed to be more skiller than others with relatively lesser scores
* Game never ends: player keeps fighting larger enemies progressively
* Game punishes poorly skilled players by forcing them to restart the game
* Squares of light vaguely resemble generic aliens
* Beeps, boops

1990s:

* A vast world of either wilderness dotted with castles or platforms dotted with powerups
* Straight-path play: player keeps fighting larger enemies progressively until they face a very large enemy and then the game ends
* Game punishes poorly skilled players by forcing them to restart from the last saved position
* Generic aliens in 16-color palettes
* Beeps, boops forming a tune: sometimes bells

2000s:

* A vast world of wilderness and platforms dotted with castles and powerups
* A progressively increasing number, called the 'experience'. As it increases, the player is presumed to be more skiller than others with relatively lesser scores
* Multiple-path play: player keeps fighting larger enemies progressively until they face a very large enemy and then the game ends, but may optionally fight other enemies that'll make the very large enemy easier to defeat
* Game punishes poorly skilled players by chastising them with a stern voice
* Generic aliens in full-motion video and high polygonal counts
* Mini-games: 1980 games may be included as sub-games where the player may gain more experience'
* Britney Spears songs

2010s:

* Quadridimensional platform castles with powerup wilderness on them
* As you defeat enemies, slot machines start spinning and money belches out the console
* Pick what enemies you'll fight out of a list at the start of the game
* Game punishes poorly skilled players with delicious candy
* Generic aliens will sit beside you and play the game with you
* Mini-games: game itself serves as a OS to launch other games
* Sean Preston Federline songs

The 10 Best Superhero Names In Comics

2006-10-18T22:47:00.000-07:00

All these are actual comic book characters. Using these names in City of Heroes may incur in copyright violations.

10. Tornado Ninja
9. Shining Knight
8. Pretty Persuasions
7. It, The Living Colossus
6. Trypto the Acid Dog
5. Amethyst, Princess of Gem World
4. Accomplished Perfect Physician
3. Immortal Bald-Man-In-Armor
2. Negasonic Teenage Warhead
1. Flaming Carrot

del.icio.us feed fixed

2006-10-08T18:24:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Squizzle for warning me. No thanks to everyone else, assuming people actually read this.

This Is Your Wake-Up Call

2006-08-13T18:30:00.000-07:00

I live on the first floor of a heavy residential area with small commerce nearby. In the same block there are apartment buildings, houses, some kind of pseudo-restaurant someone manages from their garage and at least one construction site. As a result, whenever I try to sleep off the 'regular' schedule (4 AM to 8 AM, or 4 AM to 6 AM if someone forgot to feed their dog in the evening) I am often kept awake or woken up by various noises issuing from the variety of life outside my bedroom.

We can always take something out of such experiences. Me, I've taken this bingo card who anyone in a densely populated area can use. Mark one down whenever one of these noises makes you face the next day with bags the size of basketballs under your eyes. When you complete a column (a 'Full Set') or a row (the 'Grand Tour'), award yourself a sensory deprivation chamber.

(apologies for the crappy table: Blogger is not a good table setter)

Massive gathering of small birds	Single bird in mating call mode	Lonely puppy	Excited cat	Barking dog
Stomping	Dragging	Slamming	Drilling	Hammering
Birthday party	Generic party	FREE SPACE	Shouting parent and kid	Shouting couple
Teenager practicing musical instrument	Music at full volume	Radio at full volume	TV at full volume	Karaoke machine
Motorcycle	Car	Truck	Car or motorbike-mounted loudspeaker	Horn or bell indicating opening/closing of businessplace

Samsara

2006-07-17T22:14:00.000-07:00

Saṃsāra

An Offensive Board Game
By Guilherme Töws

Components

One Pawn per person ('Karma') + 6 Pawns per person ('Souls')
One special pawn ('Buddha')
One dice
One board, explained below

The board has an outer ring with 12 sections and an inner ring with 6 sections.

Outer Ring - Clockwise from the 12 o'clock mark:
Ignorance - Move the Buddha to another World.
Deeds - Move one Soul to an adjacent world. Repeat this three times.
Consciousness - Move the Buddha to a World with none of the enemy Souls. If there's no such World, no movement occurs.
Name and Form - Exchange all Souls from a single World with all Souls from another World. The Buddha remains in its position.
The Senses - Exchange positions of a Soul with one of its opposing Souls.
Contact - Move a Soul to where a Soul of the same kind is. If this is the last Soul of its type, it has no effect.
Emotion - Move a Soul to where an opposing Soul is.
Desire - Move the Buddha to a World with none of your Souls. If there's no such World, no movement occurs.
Grasping - Move any number of Souls from the same World to an adjacent one.
Becoming - Move one Soul to any World.
Birth - Move a Soul up the wheel, towards the World of Gods. If the Soul is in the World of Hell, it may ascend in either direction.
Death - Move a Soul down the wheel, towards the World of Hell. If the Soul is in the World of Gods, it may descend in either direction.

Inner Ring - Clockwise from top:
World of Gods
World of Humans
World of Animals
World of Hell
World of Wraiths
World of Titans

How to Play

Each player places one Soul in each World, then places their Karma pawn in one of the outer ring positions. The Buddha starts in the World of Gods.
Most silent player starts.
On their turn, each player rolls the dice, then moves the Karma pawn clockwise or counter-clockwise in the outer ring. The position where the Karma pawn lands determines what action he must take regarding the Souls.
After this action, the player may choose to remove one Soul that is in the same World as the Buddha; this Soul is placed outside the board (in Nirvana) and is out of the game
Play continues with the next player.
First player to have no Souls in the board wins.

A Brief Interlude

2006-06-23T08:22:00.000-07:00

Found on Google's Minesweeper ripoff:

Mind Sweeping
Let go off your anger, free will and other impurities.
www.scientology.com

Someone is having fun with Google ads.

A Spam I Received

2006-06-20T14:26:00.000-07:00

From: Gino Melvin <%USERFROM@%domrandoman>
Subject: Hey

%CUSTOM_SENTENCES.

%INTRO

I need a degre_ee in:
%FILTERAccounting
%FILTERBusiness
%FILTERCriminal%FILTER justice
%FILTEREduc%FILTERation
%FILTERHealth
%FILTERTechnology

There are no requ%FILTERired tests, classes, books, or interviews!

Call%FILTER this number: %NUMBER (24 hours)

%END

Julia Marion

%CUSTOM_SENTENCES.
%CUSTOM_SENTENCES.
%CUSTOM_SENTENCES.
%CUSTOM_SENTENCES.
%CUSTOM_SENTENCES.
%CUSTOM_SENTENCES.
%CUSTOM_SENTENCES.

A REAL Justice League Of America

2006-05-30T15:08:00.000-07:00

I swore I'd not post about comics anymore, but I had this idea. After Newsarama disclosed the Great Ten and boards across the Internets have been complaining of the stereotypical and sexist characters (A woman that gives birth once every three days certainly is sexist. Why isn't it a MAN that gives birth every three days? Eh?). An embrionary idea for a similar american team was conceived, and yours truly combined it with a couple of ideas he pulled out of his rear end and created the one and only Uncle Sam And The Samaritans!

Uncle Sam, with the power to incide rampant patriotism and look good in photo-ops, is the field leader. He also makes enemy detecting much easier: You're either for him or against him!

Statesman, second in command, has powers granted to him by all 50 States - Greatness from Texas, invisibility from Wyoming, and so on. Unfortunately, he gets his driving skills from Florida. (did you see what I did there)

Paul Bunyan, giant lumberjack with an axe that can cleave through the very atoms of matter and generate small explosions. With him is his blue ox, Babe, an extradimensional creature of great strength.

John Henry Irons battles with twin hammers and his magical power of being better at anything than machines. Smarter than a computer, faster than an automobile!

Johnny Appleseed suffered a horrible accident and is now a half-man, half-apple-tree person. He fights crime with his awesome and terrible powers of plant generation and control.

The Nuclear Array is sworn never to use his powers, but he must remain in the team so as to guarantee its strength against the enemy.

On reserve, Lady Liberty, the Founding Father and the Preemptive Striker. As guest member, Jesus (Who claims to be on the side of the Americans, but is often seen fighting with other national squads and even soccer teams)

I Forgot Tyrannosaurus Reich Too

2006-05-25T11:01:00.000-07:00

Since I'm on a DC comics run, let's finish with the list of Top 50 DC Comic Characters I sent to some blog. Comic Curve or something. I'll link to their top 50 once it's up.

I based my list order on: If I had two comics, each featuring one of these characters, which one would I buy? This list is not without its errors, as I'd buy anything with Doom Force or the Brotherhood of Dada in it, but whatever.

Accompaining the top 10 is a great moment of each character that I found in Google.

1 Morpheus, Sandman can be quoted in pretty much anything he says and still be awesome.
2 Flex Mentallo says the most sensible thing ever said in comics in any time ever.
3 Swamp Thing goes into SPACE and becomes SPACE THING.
4 Ystin, Shining Knight decides being sent 12000 years in the future is no reason to feel down.
5 Mogo just exists.
6 Buddy Baker, Animal Man is roadkill.
7 Kyle Rayner, Green Lantern goes apeshit with his constructs. Notice Strangelove Superman on upper left.
8 Kay Challis, Crazy Jane is creepy, cute, and others, depending on time of day and phase of moon.
9 Delirium of the Endless has an unusual grasp of the situation.
10 Kid Eternity fights evil with George Washington.
11 Rebis, Negative Man
12 Frankenstein
13 Cliff Steele, Robotman
14 Danny the Street
15 Unnamed Neanderthal, Dial H For Hero
16 Klarion
17 Death, Sandman
18 Starro the Star Conqueror
19 Daniel, Sandman
20 Irwin Schwab, Ambush Bug
21 Karen Starr, Power Girl
22 Eel O'Brien, Plastic Man
23 G'Nort
24 Vera Black, Sister Superior
25 Brother Eye
26 J'onn J'onzz, Martian Manhunter
27 Linda Danvers, Supergirl
28 Mitchell Shelley, Resurrection Man
29 Querl Dox, Brainiac 5
30 Chameleon, Legion of Superheroes
31 Vandal Savage
32 Wally West, Flash
33 Selina Kyle, Catwoman
34 John Dee, Doctor Destiny
35 Faith
36 Harleen Quinzel, Harley Quinn
37 Oliver Queen, Green Arrow
38 Robby Reed, Dial H For HERO
39 Barbara Gordon, Oracle
40 Rose Wilson, Ravager
41 Edward Nigma, Riddler
42 Vic Sage, The Question
43 Zor
44 Jack Ryder, Creeper
45 Arthur Curry, Aquaman
46 Paul Booker, Major Disaster
47 Lonnie Markin, Anarky
48 Matthew Tyler, Hourman
49 Ted Kord, Blue Beetle
50 Ra's Al Ghul

Hooray DC Comics related post

2006-05-17T21:34:00.000-07:00

DC has just started a new series with magic-themed superheroes. It's called Shadowpact, and it stars a guy with a sword, a girl that can command shadows and a chimp detective. Very magical.

I'm depressed, cause frankly, there's a lot of better magical characters in DC comics that should be in a series and instead I have to swallow this drivel. Just as an example, here's a team I assembled on my lunch break.

Aquaman - The version after he got the water hand, but before he became Batman Of Underwater San Diego. If you haven't read Aquaman lately, don't ask. Put him as leader, where he can do the strategy and not have to constantly prove how awesome his powers are. And for the love of god keep his supporting cast AWAY.
Klarion - Fresh off his own miniseries and ready to be the member-in-training of a team.
Shining Knight - The Hawkgirl of the team. Flies, hits things very hard, has some knowledge of ancient (very ancient) artifacts and language AND a talking horse. Plus she is pure of heart, which always comes in handy when handling finicky old artifacts.
Frankenstein - Yes, this team is half Grant Morrison. Kind of like a more well-read Doom mariner. Send him in lone side-missions where lots of ass must be kicked.
Kid Eternity - This time ditch the Morrison version and go back to basics. Let him handle all afterlife and ghost-based problems.
Animal Man & Swamp Thing - The Red-Green team covers nearly all of nature, with Aquaman for redundancy when needed. Nature and magic go far back.
Zatanna - Not required, but the team needs more women. At least limit her powers in some way we can understand or limit her appearances.

And for principal enemies, say, Doctor Destiny, Zor and the Floronic Man. Maybe we could get Doctor Sivana too? Science versus magic is fun.

Brains

2006-05-15T23:19:00.000-07:00

I occasionally have insights into the human nature that are either wrong or better explained by someone else. This doesn't stop me from sharing them with you! For example:

When we are young and in school, most challenges of a physical nature are cooperative (football, volleyball, et cetera). In contrast, most challenges of a mental nature are competitive (test grades). This naturally conditions children to hate and distrust people smarter than them - they're the competitor, they're the enemy.

And then come the toilet dunkings and lack of socialness and people untrustable for a janitorial position as president scause they don't look threatening. And it aaall repeats on the next generation around!

EXTREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEME

2006-05-04T11:05:00.000-07:00

Did you hear about the new Scooby-Doo? I have. I can hardly wait for what other 80s cartoons will be adapted to the new superhero trend. Here are a few suggestions, to get people started:

Yogi Bear, Vampire Hunter - Yogi Bear hunts evil vampires with his superpowers of teleportation and telekinesis, along with his shapely girl sidekick, Boo Beau.

Top Cat And The Cateteers - Top Cat and his crew (Fancy^2, Spoox, Benny The Sphere, Brain and Choo^2) fight evil Emperor Dibbulax by piloting space tanks that can turn into a giant robot.

Dennis The Menacer - Dennis is a young psychic orphan boy in a grim cyberpunk world ruled by the malevolent Emperor Wilson.

Penelope Pitstop And The Pitstoppers - IN THE FUTURE OF WACKY RACES, THERE IS ONLY WAR

Can anyone do fanart of this? Like that Inspector Gadget one. It'd look totally sweet as a desktop or t-shirt.

Teh Funney

2006-04-26T12:09:00.000-07:00

With Mother 3 hitting the Japanese stores and an English translation nowhere in sight, many people will no doubt try to import the Japanese version and try to muddle through it by faith and dictionary. But no dictionary will explain to you the subtleties of Japanese humour, which often come across as non-sequiturs that might be actually funnier than the original. But let's try for purity, here. For that, here's a primer of major items of Japanese humour:

Transvestites are funny. Preferably with hilarious makeup and mustaches.
Kancho and similar are funny.
All kinds of seafood, but especially catfishes, octopi and Mola Mola are funny.
Puns are the pinnacle of hilarity, no matter if the other 5.5 billion in the planet will not understand what you mean.

Next week, we will discuss the importance of underwear and minorities in the development of true Japanese humour.

Great Expectations

2006-04-02T19:43:00.000-07:00

So, after a conversation with Kevan and Ben, the idea came to make a game that'd answer to the player's expectations of what a powerup and what an enemy is. I streamlined the idea to the very edge, and made Bug Crush (which seems to be down as of the time of this post: wait one or two days) and kept the nature of it secret. I programmed it to save some data from each game played, and tabulated the results.

And here they are - the bug colors most people see as evil:

Red, yellow and reddish-purple are the top choices. Then comes the dark yellow and the purples and dark blues.

Green and light cyan are the least evil colors of the spectrum.

In addition, out of everyone that played it, about half played a second time, and about 25% played it a third time. Replay rate was higher from there, but most people gave up after 6-7 games, figuring they had seen all to it.

Median score was 62. Four people got a perfect score of 100.

Chinchillas on a Tricycle

2006-03-22T05:44:00.001-08:00

After making such a brilliantly named movie as Snakes on a Plane, director David Ellis might have problem getting the creative juices running again. To help him, here's a small thing I cooked up between breakfast and lunch.

Snakes on a Plane 2:
(Click the button below!)

Return of Fubar

2006-03-15T10:40:00.000-08:00

Once, before I saw Dvorak I made a weird board game that was basically a simplified version of Nomic that'd not need judges and voting and crap. Here is a streamlined version of the rules for you people that like things really simple.

FUBAR - The Bizarre Board Game
(c) Guilherme S. Töws yay

What You Need:

A board. The original Fubar board is available here.
Players.
One game piece for each player.
Dice.
Pencils and maybe some slips of paper and stuff.
Piles of tokens (like poker chips) if you don't want to write statistics down.

Players place their pieces wherever they want. Roll to see who starts. On each turn a player:

Rolls two six-sided die to move his piece.
Changes the rule text in one unoccupied square.

Rule Changing

When you create the rules of a square, you must give it a name as well.

Then, add the rules. They can be just a simple command, or a complicate tangle of conditional and optional commands. Some examples of rule types:

Simple - Simple rule. 'Lose 2 Health.'
Optional - Character may opt if the rule will be executed. 'Option: Move another pawn back two squares.'
Double Edged - A rule with both a good and a bad effect. Can be coupled with Optional. 'Option: Lose 2 Money. Gain 2 Health.'
Conditional - A rule that depends on a Statistic, or the owning of a Token, or a dice roll. 'If your Health is higher than 6, gain 1 Money.'
Other

Rules can never be bound to a certain player or group of players.

Statistics

Statistics are created the moment they have to be. (If you didn't have Strength, but you just got a 'Lose 2 Strength', now you do.) They are always defaulted to the value of 10, and if any statistic reaches 0, you are out the game.

First person to win wins. Good luck!

I Am A Post-Modern One-Page RPG

2006-03-09T05:05:00.000-08:00

This came to me in a dream. I should add appropriate dice rolling to it later.

Location: The upper floors of an incredibly tall building. There is no obvious way to reach lower floors. The corridors and rooms inside are furnished in extremely varied ways - some like a house, some like a businessplace, some even like an outdoors area. The penthouse is bare.

One corridor is special - The Twilight Corridor gets progressively darker as it goes. It's not advisable to go into the darkness.

PCs: Various wide-eyed young men and women. Perhaps they are students, or employees.

NPCs: Only one - A mysterious rude older man. Maybe a teacher or boss.

Possible Stories: The man tells the PCs to do something. They do it, or suffer the consequences.

Events: These may happen now and then during the story. Or be the story.

It starts raining, even inside the building. It's hard to find cover.
The man announces, "Crushing in five minutes." In five minutes, one of the players, chosen secretly, is suddenly relocated to a couple hundred meters above the penthouse. And starts falling.
New proteges arrive and vanish without explanation. Sometimes the PCs befriend or fall in love with them. These are usually subject to crushing.

Poutpourri - On Hallucinating.

2006-02-27T03:25:00.000-08:00

I should find a way to hallucinate one of these days. Like, under command. Daydreaming is nice but you can't daydream the carpet patterns turning into a giant snake, or the curtains turning into a giant snake.

When you think about it, hallucinations have a strong giant snake component. It's like the brain had an area designed to see giant snakes. Or perhaps it's one of the totemic animals.

Perhaps 'cat people' are just under the shadow of that specific archetypal totem. Jorge Luis Borges was fascinated by tigers. Kurt Cobain? Snakes, there you go again. Then again, he was also hallucinating a lot.

Me? Squirrels. They're awesome! They're like pigeons but they hop around and generally look cute. Like miniature cats. Does anyone actually keep them as pets?

The Dark Knightess Returns

2006-01-27T19:54:00.000-08:00

Following the Batgirl-drawing meme:

Lightning from here.

Nature Database

2006-01-24T13:40:00.000-08:00

Let's admit. We'll never turn the industry truck around in time for nature to recover from the punch we've given it. In fact, it's very probable that the machine keeps growing and growing, until it has eaten everything there is to eat. Corporate interest and self-righteousness trump ethics nine times out of ten, and they only need to win once.

What we need to do, is gather all that we can. Not just store cells and eggs and seeds. We need to learn how animals educate their young and how the young learn their survival skills. How a hundred species of plants can share resources of a square meter of rainforest. The ratios of whales, algae and giant squid to liter of water. Who eats what and who eats who.

We need to learn as much as possible about how nature did it. Because it's the only example we have, and soon it will vanish. And we'll have to replace it, and copy it across the universe if we want to survive. If only so there can be a McDonald's in Andromeda.

Zara Reviews Half-Life 2

2006-01-05T22:48:00.000-08:00

1) It can be finished in ten hours. If you don't count the loading screens, thirty minutes.

2) I'll believe in 'the future of gaming' when it relies less on crate stacking and enemy dispensers. (Time To Crate: 3 seconds)

3) Not enough budget for a final boss.

Three Thoughts

2005-12-15T12:38:00.000-08:00

1) I think that now that we use XML and CSV and stuff, file extensions should be divided in two: one bit for the encoding of the data (XML, CSV etc) and one for the type of the content (RSS, CSS, whatever). Much easier to find what program will read it.

2) I think this new wave of online and multiuser software has created a new step in software development. Beyond Alpha (where the company tests the program) and Beta (where volunteers test the program), there's a new step some companies call Public Beta, but I shall call Gamma (where people pay to test the program). Gamma-testing may last from six months to eternity.

3) I think the Chinese problem of too many males could be easily solved by importing Russian brides.

Fragment Of Fan Fiction I'll Never Write

2005-11-14T21:58:00.000-08:00

Mario sighed in relief as he heard the case. There was a princess. These days you crossed the line of the law so often you didn't know what side you were on, but with princesses you knew where you stood. The Giant Turtle Lizard Kidnaps The Princess. You Rescue The Princess. The good way. The true way.

Mario is the modern knight that fights the dragon for the princess. This opposes it to other luminaires such as Sonic, who presents a Kafkian-like hero against the mindless, crushing machine, and Megaman, about a humanized machine fighting his peers in cramped featureless rooms.

It's getting so easy to write this stuff I'm scared.

Zara Reviews The Comics

2005-11-13T21:23:00.000-08:00

I am kind of out of ideas this week so I'll review some comics series.

Infinite Crisis - I like Infinite Crisis because each issue can be completely compressed into one page. And that page is the cover of the next issue. Also I like how they took a year revising every hero to be a whimpering idiot just so they could bring Grampa Superman to teach the young whippersnappers a lesson. You get 'em, Gramps.

House of M - All mutants without movie appeal are de-mutated, generating Drama and Side Plots. I got to admit I didn't see it coming, but only cause when they said they were going to change the world, I didn't think they meant they were changing it back to normality. A world without mutants! What will it be like? ... look out the window.

Y The Last Man - God this isn't going anywhere.

Seven Soldiers - Mister Miracle and Bulleteer are the newest releases. They're good, the problem is that Klarion and Shining Knight were awesome. Have no fear, there is still Frankenstein to come.

Fables - I still haven't got over the fact the Homelands arc ended like a whine contest between the GM and the player. 'you are jailed and your love was a fake haha' 'fine but as you can see in my sheet I have the power to teleport the super-magic items to me' 'dag'

Captain Universe - The Uni-Power, a mysterious power capable of granting people amazing god-like powers, stars with several Marvel superheroes and, instead of spending a lot of time merged with them causing hyper destruction and havoc, spends a lot of time not merged with them and causing hyper exposition and crap. How do you make a comic about the Hulk with ten times his usual power suck? Give him that power for a total of two pages.

Doom Patrol - It's not Doom Patrol without Crazy Jane.

This marks the 100,000th blog in the internet to talk about comics. Celebrations will be Saturday at 10 PM when most of the bloggers have an open schedule.

And Now A Board Game

2005-10-16T13:50:00.000-07:00

My main man Kevan once came up with a weird concept in answer to a 'make concepts that correspond to words' game:

sko - Ancient Japanese board game where the object is to make the other player unsure of whose turn it is.

I'm obviously in a game making roll here, since I've just thought up a game that could do that.

Start with an empty game board (any board is good, even the Fubar board) and lots of pawns on hand for each player, as well as a six-sided dice.
On each player's turn, that player places a pawn, then rolls a dice and moves each of his pawns the indicated number of steps, backward or forward. His turn ends once he has moved all pawns.
If a player moves a pawn too many steps or not enough steps in their turn, forgets to move a pawn during his turn or moves a pawn during an opponent's turn, they lose and are out of the game.
(optional rule) If a player is not sure whether he made an illegal move, he loses as well.

Perhaps this would be best with a time limit between pawn moves of five seconds or so.

Edit: Kevan's criticism of the game is that there's no way to verify who's right when there's a discussion with two equally vocal sides. Ideally there would be a way to record the result at the end of each turn, maybe by using a computer-board or a digital camera or something. If anyone has ideas on discovering the 'parity' of the board, do tell.

I Invent A New Word

2005-10-12T22:54:00.000-07:00

<Sharkey> Works fine for me.
<Friday> Fine here, too
<Kayumi> works for me.
<DNi> Ditto
<Zaratustra> tritto

MURDER! Card Game

2005-09-27T14:24:00.000-07:00

MURDER!
Card Game For 3-6 People

MURDER! is a game of crime, investigation and murder. Question your fellow players about their cards, but if you go too far you may end with blood on your hands!

Instructions:

From a standard card deck, take four number cards of the same number and two figure cards for each player, and forget the rest. You'll have six cards per player, two-thirds number cards and one-third figure cards.
Shuffle these cards and deal six to each person.
Players take turns. On your turn, you:

Ask a player to reveal one to six cards from his hand, chosen by you (randomly, since you can't see the cards) or by him, as you wish. If a figure card is revealed in this way, the player is dead.
Ask him for zero to six cards from his hand, chosen by you (again randomly) or by him.
Give him the same number of cards from your hand, chosen by him (randomly yet again) or by you. In this way, hand size remains constant.

Dead characters cannot play, and their cards are removed from the game.
The first person to acquire four number cards with the same number wins the game. If no player can complete a set because dead players hold needed cards, it's a draw and the murderer wins.

Have fun!

D&D Full-Auto Instant Magic Item Generator

2005-09-19T13:51:00.000-07:00

Aha, here it goes. Blogspot is a bit finicky with Javascript, but click the button below for an instant random magical item!

You open the chest and uncover...

Click the button below!

D&D Instant Magic Item Generator

2005-09-18T09:08:00.000-07:00

I don't know why the new edition of D&D spends more than a hundred pages just listing magical items. Here you can do the same with just one list and two 100-sided dice rolls!

You open the chest and find...
The (roll on list A) of (roll on list B)!

List A
01. Amulet
02. Armor (Chain)
03. Armor (Leather)
04. Armor (Plate)
05. Arrow
06. Axe
07. Bag
08. Bands
09. Bead
10. Belt
11. Book
12. Boomerang
13. Boots
14. Bottle
15. Bow
16. Bracelets
17. Bracers
18. Brooch
19. Cabinet
20. Candle
21. Cape
22. Card Deck
23. Chalice
24. Chime
25. Circlet
26. Cloak
27. Club
28. Crossbow
29. Cube
30. Dart
31. Decanter
32. Dust
33. Exotic Weapon
34. Eye
35. Fan
36. Farm Equipment
37. Figurine
38. Flag
39. Gauntlets
40. Gem
41. Gloves
42. Goggles
43. Hammer
44. Hand
45. Hat
46. Headband
47. Helmet
48. Horn
49. Horseshoes
50. Incense
51. Ioun Stone
52. Javelin
53. Key
54. Knife
55. Lantern
56. Lenses
57. Mace
58. Mantle
59. Mask
60. Medallion
61. Mirror
62. Morningstar
63. Musical Instrument
64. Necklace
65. Net
66. Oil
67. Orb
68. Periapt
69. Phylactery
70. Pickaxe
71. Pipes
72. Polearm
73. Potion
74. Quiver
75. Ring
76. Robe
77. Rod
78. Rope
79. Salve
80. Scabbard
81. Scarab
82. Scythe
83. Shield
84. Shirt
85. Shoes
86. Shrouds
87. Skull
88. Sling
89. Slippers
90. Spear
91. Spoon
92. Staff
93. Sword (Long)
94. Sword (Short)
95. Token
96. Vest
97. Vestment
98. Wand
99. Well
00. Whip

List B
01. Adaptation
02. Animal Friendship
03. Annihilation
04. Appearance
05. Arrow Catching
06. the Bat
07. Blinking
08. Brilliance
09. Building
10. Charming
11. Climbing
12. Cursed Backbiter
13. Dancing
14. Defense
15. Detonations
16. Devouring
17. Disappearance
18. Disguise
19. Dispel Magic
20. Displacement
21. Dryness
22. Elements
23. Elvenkind
24. Entanglement
25. Etherealness
26. Eyes
27. Feather Falling
28. Fire
29. Flailing
30. Flying
31. Folding
32. Free Action
33. Friends
34. Frost
35. Ghost Touch
36. Handiness
37. Haste
38. Haunting
39. Healing
40. Health
41. Hypnosis
42. Illumination
43. Illusions
44. Immovable
45. Interruption
46. Invisibility
47. Invocation
48. Jumping
49. Keen Edge
50. Leadership
51. Lightning
52. Lordly Might
53. Love
54. the Mage
55. Many Things
56. Many Worlds
57. Might
58. Nightmares
59. Nondetection
60. Opening
61. Pain
62. Panic
63. Poison
64. Polymorph
65. Protection
66. Pure Good
67. Ram
68. Revealing
69. Scintillating Colors
70. Seeing
71. Serpent
72. Shooting Stars
73. Silence
74. Size Alteration
75. Slipperiness
76. Slow
77. Sounding
78. Speed
79. Spider Climb
80. Stars
81. Stoneskin
82. Storing
83. Swarming Insects
84. Telekinesis
85. Teleportation
86. Three Wishes
87. Tongues
88. Tricks
89. Truth
90. Ultimate Evil
91. Undead
92. Useful Items
93. Valhalla
94. Water Breathing
95. Water Walking
96. Wind
97. Wisdom
98. Wonder
99. Wound Closure
00. X-Ray Vision

Story Time III

2005-09-16T21:13:00.000-07:00

This is actually the second story I've written in this story-writing arc, but it's sorta like the first, so it comes third. The first and last sentences come from dreams, I think. Also, I do not intend to offend the mentally deficient and whatever.

Background Noise
By Guilherme T.

It used to appear only in my dreams. Now I see it every time I close my eyes. A body like a big lizard, the kind that was around when there was only one continent. Wings of black leather. And, of course, the cephalopod head. Eight squirming, slimy tentacles.
The description really doesn’t do it justice. There’s all kinds of connotations the sight brings to the mind, just like a charging tiger brings to the mind much more than black and yellow stripes.
Your brain gets used to it, though. After the tenth time or so. Or it doesn’t bend back, same thing.
I look around my workplace and wonder if they see it too. They’re all doing normal stuff: working, pretending to work, talking about last night’s game and making lame jokes about the guy that decided to do things differently once in his life and come to work wearing a pink shirt. The salt of the earth, people. Humanity at its very best.
I check the email out of boredom. Ten from spammers, three with jokes from fellow workmates and none from friends. Same old, not like I call them. Even less now that I’m crazy.
Strange. The spam messages seem different, somehow. Not enough sexual enhancements, too many contests for trips to Cancún or Bali or whatever. Too many jokes about fish and sailors. Fixed thoughts, clearly. It’s not paranoia if everyone else is going goddamn crazy too, right?
Right. Like any nutcase worth their salt wouldn’t think they’re normal. Work is making me crazy in the head. I’m a very sick man, I need medicine.
I start writing a report on work done this week. When I’m done I look at the screen and realize half of what I typed is gibberish. No, not quite gibberish. You could recite it, or chant it when dancing around a fire wearing nothing but a bone headdress.
Delete everything, clear your mind. The tentacled face in there. Damn society for not keeping us busy enough to ignore the voices in our heads. Better wait until after lunch to work.
The line for lunch is long and slow, the fellow ahead of me choosing his food with the attention and fastidiousness of a retard. No chicken today. Only fish fillets and squid. I wasn’t hungry anyway.
I go back to my desk. I try to type the report again and end up typing three pages of delirious chanting before shutting down the computer in anger. I must calm down. Reboot the computer and pretend to work. It’s Friday, just a few more hours and I can go home and rest and maybe meet some people that are not insane and see if their non insanity is contagious.
Someone walks in and talks loudly with the person beside me. I wonder if I should ask them, if they have something waiting for them to sleep. Not a good question to ask in a competitive work environment. Maybe I should stop shaving, write my story in a big piece of cardboard and wear it downtown.
I’m called for a surprise company presentation at four o’clock. Everyone is.
Apparently, the CEO felt there was a need for a change in the company’s image to the client and such, and the marketing team had been working for a month on possible redesigns. This week they finally came up with something that earned a thumbs up from above.
The new company logo is to be eight curved lines, emerging from a central spot, flanked by two stylized wings. It evokes images of the sun and the sky, they said. Apparently they came up with it during their sleep.
Right. Still, nice to know I’m not crazy. The next week comes, and the week after that, still working as usual. People look a bit more strained, but the place’s quieter.
Oh, and Friday isn’t that nice anymore. Sometimes there’s an eighth day on the week. You don’t want to know what work we do on those days.

This Week In Comics

2005-09-01T19:52:00.000-07:00

The Flash punches a villain so hard his wife gets pregnant again.

Story Time II

2005-08-15T16:59:00.000-07:00

I have written another Story. It is a good Story about the dangers of Technology and Arrogance.

Forget Me Not
by Guilherme T.

The device beeped, indicating it was ready.
The Professor adjusted his glasses. "Well then, what do you plan to do now?"
"Now," the Engineer replied, "I think we should test it."
"But just test it? Surely we need to study it, to discuss the connotations that a machine of death like this would have!"
"Oh, I have thought of the connotations. I do not care about them."
"But think of it! This is not a child's toy. You said this device can kill any person - from any point in time!"
"Yes! It can not only kill a person, it will remove every sign that person has ever existed. Text, data, even memories. It completely and thoroughly wipes that being from the space-time."
The Professor shook his head. He had a decent upbringing, one in which the possibility of altering the continuity of time had not figured overmuch. "But you can't just make a hole in the tapestry of history, my good friend. You know all about butterflies and tornados."
The engineer gestured at a blackboard, full of writing and sketching. "You see, that's the beauty of it. The universe heals around such a hole. It flows around it and returns to normal as soon as possible. And, of course, nobody notices. The theory is simple and sound."
"And the responsibility of it? Will you take on your hands someone's blood?"
"There's no blood. Clean as sin. Come, Professor. Surely we, between the two of us, can make just as good a decision or better than any bureaucracy, over a single person whose inexistence would make the world a better place."
The Professor hesitated. He couldn't find more arguments against the concept - All discussions on crime and justice he could recall took as granted the fact that you could not punish someone before they commited a crime. And they weren't even predicting the crime - they were looking back on it and throwing the sword even farther back. He suddenly felt very unsure of his ethical standings.
"Very well", he quavered. "Let's test it and see who is proved wrong. But who did you have in mind to remove from history?"
"Just think of someone. Whose lack would make the universe better? Who's the most hateful person in the history of the whole world?"
The Professor thought for a long while, weighing the pros and cons of six thousand years. Surely his colleagues had discussed the very same question since the dawn of history, and would continue to do so until the stars grew cold. This wasn't the time for discussing, though. Now he could do something about it, and the world would be better for it.
Then a name came to his mind. Surely the world would be better without that person. He said the name out loud, and the Engineer nodded.
"Yes, I know who. Give me a moment and it'll be done."
The Engineer adjusted the many-fold dials and levers of the device, and lights glowed blue to indicate a lock on the person. With a degree of solemnity appropriate to operating a device of death, the Engineer brought his hand down on the big red button.
He stepped back, and both waited.
"In a couple of seconds", the Engineer said, "There will be no trace or memory left of--"
The device beeped, indicating it was ready.
The Professor adjusted his glasses. "Well then, what do you plan to do now?"
"Now," the Engineer replied, "I think we should test it."

Idea for a Cartoon

2005-08-10T15:26:00.000-07:00

Scene: President Bush's office. There's a sticker attached to the back of his chair that reads:

IN CASE OF RAPTURE THIS COUNTRY WILL BE UNMANNED

Omnipresence

2005-07-15T19:10:00.000-07:00

Found on this site:

Richard Corben returns to October’s Swamp Thing #20 as the Swamp Thing tries to escape reality by creating smaller and smaller versions of himself, until he reaches a subatomic universe, where he then encounters John Constantine.

I thought it was a parody of the typical Vertigo fare, but it isn't. Constantine really is everywhere.

The Text Adventure Game

2005-06-27T21:56:00.000-07:00

This is a game you can play on message boards or with friends. Any number of players is acceptable.

The first person to play states a problematic situation. For example:

* You are inside a ten foot pit with smooth walls. There is no way to climb up.

The next person describes a way to solve the problem, and a new problem that hinders that solution. Such as:

* You could make a ladder out of the branches that fell off a tree above the pit and are lying in the bottom of the pit, if only you had something to tie them together.

Each of these solution/problem combinations counts as one point to the person making them. In addition, the player that can use the scenario presented to solve one of the problems in a different way, he gains another point.

Example: Player 3 says:

* There is some rope tied to a loop in the ground here that could be used to tie the branches together, but it is tied too tightly to be removed.

Then player 4 can reply:

* If you had the rope, you could make a lasso and throw it at the tree above the pit and climb it.

gaining one point in the process.

Players take turns in order, first person to N points wins.

This was tested in a message board with no scoring and no turn taking. It's pretty fun anyway. If you decide to actually play this game, be sure to tell me how it went.

(edit: added link to message board game)

I Wrote A Story

2005-06-15T13:38:00.000-07:00

The first three sentences came to me in a dream. I wrote the rest in a half-sleepy daze and then promptly refused to even look at the text again. Opinions presented in the text are not necessarily those of the author.

World Without End
by Guilherme T.

Things were different in the year 2300.

For instance, things Made Sense now. There wasn't much wondering about the purpose of life and the existence of the soul while the Angels Of The Lord were scourging the earth with fire and light.

Charlie Brown saw one of them close. The wings of glass, the halo of mirrors, the flaming sword. His own face.

The punishment came in no order any human could divine. Angels descended in one or hundred, burning people or cities. From the High Priest to the lowest prostitute, all ranks were decimated.

No man could discern the reasons the chosen for scourging were so. Religion or personal philosophy did not matter, nor whether one believed being damned or forgiven.

Some said they saw the reason for punishment on the mirrored halo, before the blade made the sentenced into ashes and dust. These observations are not controlled and shouldn't be taken into account by the scientific mind.

Charlie Brown wasn't burned. In the city of a hundred million, he saw the Angel, but he was not burned. He was alone. Cast aside.

The world was still outside, and sometimes its shouts came in. Come out, it shouted. No, give up, it replied. Discussing, reasoning, arguing, pleading.

Charlie Brown didn't care. He had seen the mirrored halo, why others were burned and he was left. He could not argue: The reasons made perfect sense, once you knew them.

The world's shouts now mostly agreed the Angels were sending the righteous to their just reward. The flames free the spirit, it said. We are being carried from this world to our just reward.

Angels were welcomed in cheers and song, even as the flaming swords turned the singers to the phlogiston.

Charlie Brown sat, and waited. Eventually others came, others who had seen their fate in the mirrored halo and knew the truth, or something that would pass for it on a brief inspection.

The world grew silent. The skies turned silver, and the sea became glass. Soon the Other Savior would come, and reign upon earth made heaven, just as his counterpart ruled heaven above earth.

After eternity passes, they would meet again.

Random Nation

2005-06-05T16:04:00.000-07:00

You know, I was talking about randomly generated puzzles, and I didn't notice pretty much every computer with Windows has a couple of them in. Just open the tab 'Games' and check any of the solitaire games. Specially Freecell, which has no invisible component from the start: All the cards are open to see and consider the strategy.

What makes solitaire games capable of such randomizing? For one, there's a lot of leeway in what moves you can make (Freecell allows you to play any red card on any black card of a value one number higher, as well as four 'free cells' that can be used for storage of any card). The number of free cells could be changed to alter difficulty, even. Choose 500 games randomly, see how many can be solved with each number of free cells or card stacks.

So it appears that the easiest way to make random solvable puzzles is to either have a generator we know will make a solvable game, or have a variable that can be adjusted to make unsolvable games solvable. An automatic solver is also pretty helpful in that bit, so you can check for move count, alternate solutions and whatnot.

Now, what can I apply this stuff to.

A mIRC Poem

2005-05-26T15:25:00.000-07:00

<Zaratustra> control be
<Zaratustra> control are
<Zaratustra> control you

Write Your Own Robert A. Heinlein Book

2005-05-24T15:27:00.000-07:00

After reading nearly fifty books by sci-fi author Robert A. Heinlein (I'm a fast reader and easily bored), I believe I can encapsulate the philosophies that went into creating them such that any person, even you, could write their very own novel.

Take a 20-sided dice and roll it on the table below, as many times as needed until you reach 50000 words. Add whatever sci fi gadget is on the cover of this week's Scientific American OR National Inquirer.

Our young male WASP hero... (Note: I've been pointed to the fact that most of Heinlein's books feature non-WASP heroes. I shall correct myself.)

Our young male multiracial Anglo-Saxon Protestant hero...

1 - ...enters the Army
2 - ...enters a multi-member family
3 - ...founds a religion
4 - ...founds a corporation
5 - ...fights a religion
6 - ...fights a corporation
7 - ...falls in love with high school sweetheart
8 - ...falls in love with strong, independent woman
9 - ...witnesses current love interest marry other person
10 - ...decides to marry current love interest
11 - ...takes sage advice from fatherly figure and wisely heeds it
12 - ...is bullied around by harsh fatherly figure
13 - ...realizes harsh fatherly figure was actually right in their harshness
14 - ...is patronized by motherly figure
15 - ...inherits a large sum of money or corporation from dead fatherly figure
16 - ...takes sage advice from lawyerly figure and wisely heeds it
17 - ...talks to scientists that have discovered an entirely new scientific concept and can use it for either transportation or combat
18 - ...has to handle the complex society of small groups in cramped spaces
19 - ...has to handle the complex society of small groups in a new colony isolated from government
20 - ...rambles on how army life is the best life to be

Passive Action

2005-05-17T14:29:00.000-07:00

I wonder what we're supposed to do, as a generation. At least inside my social circles, I'm surrounded by cynics as far as the eye can see: It seems that nobody wants to change the world aside from making a nice space in the sand to sleep on. Note I conveniently ignore the people happily harrying behind whatever government is up to do whatever it takes to defend the country from what it doesn't need to be defended from.

I won't even talk about the people from -my- country that suddenly decided Colombia is the greatest country in the world cause it had the balls to 'stand up' to America. I hate it when countries behave like teenagers.

My point is, how does the world change? Is it by the sudden effort of small numbers or the slow weight of growing masses? Is the 'new' generation of people that don't care about the minor squabbles of politics and religions and all the bloody but mostly circular pattern of history enough to actually make weight in the politics they shun, or will they be cast aside by the crowd that believes they were ordained to wield the lance of righteousness against those that are outside?

Perhaps a stance should be made for active passiveness. The Passive Party. Its motto shall be, Let's Not And Say We Did.

I Don't Like Gears Or Fighting

2005-04-18T22:15:00.000-07:00

My internet access at work has been restrained even more, so I do not have access to this blog on the time that I feel more inclined to update it. The thoughts just do not come out correctly at the late hours of the day.

After having read Gantz at indication of my friends, I have built a theory of how the Anime Hero is different from the common Comic Heroes. To wit, the normal Comic Book Hero worth his salt is guided by the principles of:

Truth
Justice
The American Way (presumably freedom of speech, invading Eastern countries and not letting immigrants in)

While the standard Anime Hero is driven by:

Ennui
Angst
Megalomania

In any order. The Anime Hero either hates everything, doesn't care about anything, or is better than everything. The Angst of the Anime Hero is the source of his power, usually employed on the use of large humanoid machines (As we had previously proven, giant robots and spaceships have bypassed the hydrogen solution and are fueled by pure angst)

The Anime Hero is either clever, spouting schemes so intricate the audience could never hope to fathom it - and not just because of bad translation - or apparently terminally stupid but really clever on the inside. He will always be the first to discover how the weapons/robots/vehicles issued to the team increase in power tenfold when he's really angry. This is because he is clever, and not, say, really easy to get angry.

The Anime Hero's most frequent expression is the blank look. The second most frequent is the angry scowling, and the third is the maniacal grin.

The Anime Hero's limitations, or the fact his interactions with the opposite sex are blunter and more awkward than a ninja gorilla, do not hinder his interaction with the Supporting Girls. They all love him and pine for him, often three or four at the same time. The Anime Hero uses that love in his benefit in order to fulfill whatever desires run low on his status screen. Some times, very infrequently, he will fall in love with a girl, which will then die.

I want to be an Anime Hero when I grow up. You should too.

DC, Washington DC

2005-03-28T04:01:00.000-08:00

Should have included the Dreamcast somewhere. Oh well.

Apparently, DC's great world-spanning plot is called Infinite Crisis. Makes sense: Crisis on Infinite Earths had cosmic creatures vying for all existence, while Infinite Crisis features a funny looking satellite and Lex Luthor teaming up with Deathstroke The Guy That Pokes Things With Swords. I can just feel the cosmic repercussions.

Also, I figured out why people think these books have such great character development: It's the thought balloons. There's like pages and pages of Blue Beetle mentally reviewing how much Barbara Gordon gives him a great big chubby. Next up it will be superhero blogs, no doubt.

Meanwhile, ESRB continues their efforts to allow all ages to decently enjoy videogames... whoops nevermind Hillary Clinton hasn't been listening and is pushing Bush to make more studies because children are playing GTA. Since my motion to replace violence with more sex hasn't found ears, I suggest we wait for all politicians currently older than 30 to retire and groom their children and obvious sucessors into avid gamers. Do your part for the country, introduce a politician's son to Nintendo.

You Still Can't Get Ye Flask

2005-03-09T05:48:00.000-08:00

Whenever I get 'normal' people to play text adventures (or for the more pedantically inclined, 'interactive fiction'), they reject it as soon as they discover the computer won't understand 'grab the left glove from atop the fireplace' even if you add 'please' at the end. These are usually the same people that have no issue with the hundreds of buildings on MMORPGs that have apparently painted-on doors.

I've been playing City of Heroes recently, and it constantly impresses me with its simple design. Not simple in a good way, mind you: The palette of game actions is incredibly limited. You can attack villains with an array of 30 or so powers with various flashy effects, heal friends with a few other powers, open doors, find clues, jump up objects for the occasional badge bonus and.... that's it. I was surprised to find that you can make enemies fall in lava and get hurt: That's how low of an expectation I had for the game.

What do we learn from this? After twenty years of gamemaking, the designer's bag of tricks continues tiny as ever. Granted, many games are purposefully limited in this way: for example Tetris wouldn't be better if you could turn the blocks 45 degrees or choose what block you can drop; you're supposed to do the best you can with what the computer throws at you. But the new wave of games, so to say, seems to stick with these limitations more out of tradition or lack of creativity than to offer a challenge to players. Is there any reason why you shouldn't be able to talk a group of monsters into surrendering or throw a car at them or use their fallen comrades as blunt weapons? Of course there is - the programmers didn't add that.

If game companies spent nearly as much on adding gameplay value to their games as they do crafting beautiful threedimensional scenery and generic fantasy plots, we'd reach the skies. GTA and Metal Gear Solid would look like Pac-Man. (Which, in fifteen years or so, has not been improved upon.)

Poutpourri

2005-02-21T08:37:00.000-08:00

OK a lot of people (two) say they love my blog, so I am feeling guilty for not updating. I have some kind of disease, though, so instead of a large coherent whole I will just post bits of posts.

Scientists have proven -again- that pollution will cause global warming. Bush is, obviously, not convinced. A person I've spoken to won't believe it unless there is 'conclusive' proof, which for all I know would be a video of the oceans swallowing Manhattan. 'But the earth has warmed up before, Zara!' Yes, and once the earth was also a ball of lava. Doesn't mean it'd be normal for it to turn into a ball of lava overnight.
Promethea 32 and last is out and it rules. For those that weren't paying attention, Promethea is a comic by Alan Moore that 1) has an amazing hippie plot, 2) experiments with the comic media in a way that'd make Scott Mccloud wet his pants, and 3) belongs to the deconstructionist branch typical of the New Comics. At least the ones that don't feature Ten-Eye Man raping Firehawk or some crap.
I dreamed Madrox the Multiple Man and V (for Vendetta) were in a comic teamup. Maybe it's the flu.
There should be a Transformers RPG if only so I can play a robot that turns into a larger robot. And that robot could maybe transform into an even larger one.
I think I'm not feeling so well.
A good trick to play on your psychologist is to say you see tigers in every blot he shows you. Then mention you see them on his tie too. Let him notice the knife you've hid in your coat.
The word 'Arete' in Greek means 'excellence'. The Ancient Greeks applied the term to anything; the excellence of a horse, the excellence of a bull to be bred, or the excellence of a man. (Wikipedia) That's right, Arete is Greek for awesome.
Are jokes about seeing stuff in horshach blots played out?
real sick here
shining light of the great gazonga
hurf blurf

Common Misconceptions Of The Common American

2005-01-24T08:15:00.000-08:00

During my travels through this superinformation superhighway that is the Internets, I've heard rumors that could easily be debunked with the proper information. Without further aldo:

Terrorists hate America because of our freedom. False. Terrorists hate you because you are rich, worship the wrong god and let women wear pants.

Other countries hate America because they're jealous of us. Totally true. America is the rich kid that is also the schoolyard bully. We all hate him, yet want to be him.

We gave a lot of money to the tsunami victims, the world is being ungrateful. False. We know the 30 million something were all taken from the pocket change Bill Gates gave various congressmen to continue being a monopoly. America is spending more than that to buy toilet paper for Iraq soldiers.

The war on Iraq had a reason. True. Hussein offended Bush's dad.

WMDs Nope. Iraq doesn't have them, Iran doesn't have them. Exactly the reason why they're being or will be attacked. Note that other countries with just as evil dictators like North Korea and (random Middle East country) are getting scot free.

But we deposed a dictator! True. The other dictators will learn to be more subtle.

The French are surrendering weenies LOL False. France is a cool country that brought us Audrey Tatou, and which has the disadvantage of not having large bodies of water between it and most countries willing to attack it. After a few Paris bombings, any country would start being anti-war.

People voted for Bush cause they're stupid. Not completely true. They also voted for Bush cause they wanted to see the smile wiped off the face of the people that break into uncontrollable laughter whenever they hear the word ' Jesus'.

I'm moving to Canada. Sorry to inform, but Canada hates you too.

I don't support the war, but I support the soldiers. Bollocks. The USA doesn't have a draft. Every soldier in the army has voluntarily signed to shoot foreigners. If you support the teary-eyed soldiers that are just doing their job, you -are- supporting the war.

I can't do anything about it. False. We won't go into further detail since the secret service may be watching and we'd like to go back to the USA to buy a DS at half price.

AMVs That We Want To See

2005-01-14T09:20:00.000-08:00

The reader (that's you) is certainly aware of the concept of the AMV (Anime Music Video) in that one makes a videoclip with scenes from an anime and some music. Recently some VGMV (Videogame Music Videos) have surfaced, featuring fighting game characters rocking each others' faces as heavy metal plays in the background. Thusly, I list the AMVs that I have pictured in my mind, but have sadly been unable to find in the real world.

Video: End of Evangelion
Audio: R.E.M. - It's The End Of The World As We Know It
Comment: This is such a perfect match I am sure only my sub-badass search abilities have not found it.

Video: Akira
Audio: Madonna - Just A Prayer
Comment: Make best possible use of the 'When you call my name' and 'I can feel your power' bits.

Video: Legend Of The Overfiend
Audio: Men At Work - Down Under
Comment: Get it? Hahaha I crack me up.

Video: Teen Titans, Samurai Jack and the rest of the new wave of american anime
Audio: The Vapors - Turning Japanese
Comment: I am aware of the undertones of the music and would like to point that while several songs can be used for self-pleasing euphemisms, only one refers to the ever-increasing phenomenon of turning Japanese.

Video: Clips from Ninja Gaiden games
Audio: No Doubt - Just A Girl
Comment: If you do not grasp the significance of this, you do not know the history of your games. Study more and eat your vegetables.

Video: Serial Experiments Lain
Audio: Macy Gray - Oblivion
Comment: Oblivion is such a cool song that it needs to be SOMEWHERE.

Video: Evangelion - Elevator bit
Audio: John Cage - 4'33"
Comment: I once saw all of Evangelion and Serial Experiments Lain in the same weekend. It made my mind complex, like an anti-Flaming Carrot.

As usual, feel free to use the Comments box below to its maximum capability to express just how geeky the post above was.

Shock And Outrage And Shock And Outrage

2004-12-21T04:45:00.000-08:00

Read Identity Crisis #7. Not to spoil anything, but the killer's name rhymes with 'Jean Ploring'.

I'm somewhat disappointed. Having the Atom did it would at least bring awareness to the problem of high-powered superbeings not getting laid enough (vide Watchmen), while this result just highlights what we knew about DC:

1) DC hates women (Marvel too, but hides it), and
2) A-block characters never get in big trouble unless it's plastered across the cover.

Even the sideplot where they gleefully throw excrement at Silver Age has already been outdone by Marvel revealing the virginal love ef every comic book reader over 30, Gwen Stacy, was sleeping around with ol' Stripehair Osborn. Fanfic writers everywhere are complaining, because there's no way they could possibly do anything nastier than the companies themselves are already doing.

And, frankly: Am I the only one that notices the woman stepping on the carpet the World's Greatest Detectives declared unmarred? At least Scooby Doo kept track of the clues. Oh well. We can still amuse ourselves reading the reviews saying how this will leave 'a permanent mark on the DC universe' and things will never be the same, at least until the next sales drop.

Kingdom Come

2004-12-16T09:32:00.000-08:00

With the imminent arrival of Kingdom Hearts II, which seems to proeminently figure a goth Mickey, message boards are burning with rumors of what will be in the sequel, most of them in some proto-european language. Using Altavista's newest Internet-to-English software, we've uncovered that the newest work of Disney-Square-Enix-Capcom-Dreamworks-Some Guy With Money will have:

* Extra playable characters: Mary Poppins, Herbie the Love Bug, Panchito (Featured in the new Mexicana level, where you must beat Heartless worms in bottles and dangerous immigrants)

* 50% less of those guys from those games of that Japanese company, whatever it is.

* Sequel will be released for TV only, have vastly inferior and derivative plot and none of the good voice acting of the original.

* White Wilderness minigame: Push as many lemmings off the cliff as possible within one minute.

* Even though it says Disney on the cover, most of the job was done by Pixar.

* Brand-new Legal Battle System! Defeat the enemies by pushing them off the Public Domain edge and copying their powers, but don't forget to give money to the battle judges to avoid falling through it yourself!

* To cash in with Da Vinci Code, the game comes with an edition of the Bible, containing previously unpublished apocryphal books that indicate the third member of the Trinity is actually Mickey Mouse.

* Additional cutscenes displaying the corpses of JM Barrie, Burroughs, Carroll and La Fontaine spinning on their graves.

Money Can't Buy Me Love

2004-12-15T06:30:00.000-08:00

The hep thing nowadays is online games. And you can't just play online games, you have to be the L3WT3ST in there. It's statistically impossible for everyone to be on top, so the job falls, as usual, to the richest.

Now this is a novel idea! Why make games clean and balanced when we can jump at the chance of cash! Wizards of the Coast knows it. Thinking of that, I've quickly crafted a set of alternate rules for popular games so that you can also get in the game of MAKING MONEY!

Monopoly - Players can pay the owner of the game one dollar for an extra $1000 in game money. ADVANCED RULE: Fluctuate prices according to demand.

Chess - Pay $5.00 to the builder of the chess set to promote one of your pawns to a Queen.

Poker - For a one-time fee of $100 to the party host, you may play with six cards on hand.

Rock-Paper-Scissors - Instead of playing, give your opponent a twenty and say, 'I win.' If he does not agree, repeat.

Remember, fun is much more fun when it's made of money.

A Koan

2004-12-02T06:00:00.000-08:00

I Shot The Sheriff

2004-11-26T11:01:00.000-08:00

Have you heard of JFK Reloaded? Of course you have. At this moment, only trichordates and foreigners have not heard about the game that destroys everything that America stands for by allowing you, as Lee Harvey Oswald, to shoot at Kennedy's digital noggin.

Personally, I'm impressed. Most people don't think of videogame as art, but it's certainly capable of messing with emotions and causing controversy as the best art can do. Escatologists, rejoice: The human moral can still be jabbed painfully, you just need 3D Studio. Nobody batted an eyelid at the Osama Bin Laden or Hitler-killing games, because they're obvious and patent archetypes of Evil. Kennedy is a symbol of Good, and attacking him means you are attacking all that is Good by proxy.

Why people are being so vitriolic at JFK Reloaded? It's a Stair Dismount with a president's face on the doll. It offers a prize for hitting the bullseye. I theorize it's because it jabs at one of the most complex and brittle axioms of human thought: That imagining doing something, and actually doing that thing, are unrelated things. State and religion across the ages has tried to restrain thoughts in order to restrain actions, and there's the ever present fear that putting an idea in a person's head might make them act on it. Doctrination, the game humanity has played upon itself since it decided a straight bipedal stance would help with the ladies.

In conclusion: 2005, WTC Reloaded. It's just a simulation.

To Play The Impossible Play

2004-11-18T08:25:00.000-08:00

The Theory Of Fun website (Not linked because of religious reasons) sustains that people seek but are bored by routine in games. Personally, I'd say people seek but are quickly bored by easy rewards in games. However, I like their idea of making puzzles the maker doesn't know the solution of. Games are usually a challenge of wits or skill between the player and the creator (Kojima knows that), and if the maker is dumb, the player will win easily.

The HAWT solution of the moment is to use other players instead. But is it possible to, say, guard a sidequest item behind a monster you have no idea whether anyone will be able to defeat? I managed to do that in DROD once, with a corridor 4 tiles wide full of goblins. I had no idea how to get through it, and some testers showed me. (I forgot again.) DROD makes this easy to do, since the 'large mob of goblins' monster can vary between utterly deadly in open quarters to dead meat in a narrow corridor. Just add and remove walls to suit the difficulty to your liking. Of course, there -was- the possibility the thing was impossible, in which case I might have been lynched.

Perhaps the way is to make a random or genetic puzzle/monster builder, with a solver that ensures there is SOME way to defeat it. Make a couple of hundred, scatter them across the countryside, and watch the players make for your throat.

Videogames in Violence

2004-11-18T05:13:00.000-08:00

Videogames are violent. TV told you that, the RIAA told you that, your mom told you that. You've tried the argument, 'but mom, TV is much more violent!' and it obviously did not work, because nobody watches TV by choice. TV is not just a habit, it's reflex. Where was I? Oh, yeah.

Anyway, in this article I forgot where it was, they were interviewing kids on what they think. One particular homeschooled 14-year-old girl came up with the idea of 'coming up with something to replace violence that boys of all ages would like.'

At that point, I was enlightened. I bet you understand, too.

It's time for videogames to have more sex.

More love, less war. Enough with Peach just 'baking a cake' for Mario in return of him passing through an entire mutant turtle horde with nothing but two boots and an incredibly resilient forehead. Enough with Meryl and Aeris and lord knows how many hero's girls dying before the end of act two. THE FUTURE IS THE NOOKIE. Will Wright knows it and he is rich. You know what to do.

PLUGH

2004-11-17T04:42:00.000-08:00

Remember text adventures? Excuse me - interactive fiction. Nowadays it's about as niche as stamp collecting, but why is it so niche? I'm sure interactive stories can entice people. (Japanese dating games prove that.)

Personally, I think it's the fact IF technology stopped in 1980. No further effort has been made to evolve from the roboticized commands (PUSH CRATE. UNLOCK DOOR WITH KEY. ASSIMILATE.) and standardized puzzles. The thousand-fold increase in computing power went completely past the Inform/TADS crowd. This is mostly because programmers, not unlike certain species of birds, have preferred to use all the extra computer cycles in making games shinier, instead of smarter. IF is notoriously hard to make shiny.

I'm not sure how IF can benefit from computer superpower, but I'm sure something can be done. A better parser, a better object system. A new world is possible.

Make Your Own Movie Alien

2004-10-27T06:42:00.000-07:00

Here I present my own, tried-and-true method to create your own Movie Alien. All you need is a standard 6-sided dice and a couple of minutes.

* Type Of Movie Alien:

1 - Insectoid
2 - Insectoid
3 - Insectoid
4 - Shapeless Blob
5 - Shapeless Blob
6 - Huge Worm

* Skin Covering:

1 - Armor plates
2 - Armor plates
3 - Armor plates
4 - Armor plates
5 - Armor plates
6 - Mangy fur

* Outward Appearance:

Featureless face with nothing but a big toothed mouth. This appeals to humanity's atavic fear of big toothed mouths.

* Bizarre Alien Ability:

1 - Can take human shape
2 - Can take human shape
3 - Can take human shape
4 - Can possess humans
5 - Really cool AlienCam(tm) Vision
6 - Incubates in humans

ALL Movie Aliens can climb walls and ceilings.

* Intelligence:

1 - Swim swim hungry
2 - Animalistic but smart
3 - Feral but learns from mistakes
4 - Instinctive but patient
5 - Has no education but learns quickly
6 - All the above

* Evolved Forms:

1 - Achieve flight through intestinal gas
2 - Can take human shape
3 - Alternate Really Cool AlienCam(tm) Vision
4 - More Big Toothed Mouths
5 - Tentacles
6 - Can take human shape

* Organization

1 - Hive with queen
2 - Hive with queen
3 - Hive with queen
4 - Hive with queen
5 - Hive with queen
6 - Hive with queen

* Weakness

1 - Fire
2 - Cold
3 - Bullets
4 - Explosions
5 - Ellen Ripley
6 - None, you just have to beat it up a lot

There you have it! Make sure the main star survives for the sequel.

I Swear I Dreamed This

2004-10-26T10:37:00.000-07:00

A spaceship that's powered by the angst of a couple dozen teenagers. The ship is going to crash against a planet and it's up to the hero to solve the teenagers' issues and slow it down before the disaster.

In Darkest Light

2004-10-07T07:59:00.000-07:00

I've come to the conclusion that, while I like the idea of Green Lanterns - people with rings that can do anything their little brains will them to, kind of like a cosmic paintbrush - I absolutely abhor the mythology created around them. ( Guardians? Starheart? Space cops?)

I thought about it a bit, and ended up inventing a new mythology for them. Stop me if you've heard this one before. Lanterns would be generic items, somehow infused with demiurgic energy from an unknown source (unknown but to the GM that is) Each Lantern has an associated color in which it has more control (Green is Creation, red is Destruction, purple is Control, blue is I forgot the rest) They're not only lantern shaped: the Firestorm matrix, the HERO device, the amulet of Nabu are all examples of lanterns.

A lot of these items have minds. Small ones that whisper to their owner at night, strong ones that take over their owners and rule all. Their purposes are varied, their reasons unknown.

I guess we could fit G'Nort in there somehow, too.

Political Post

2004-09-27T09:55:00.000-07:00

So, apparently, even though Bush's government has the second lowest employment rate in all history of US presidency, he sent thousands of US soldiers in a totally purposeless war (Don't come saying 'Saddam had to be deposed'. The US are not the world's mom and it's not their position to come running in solving every problem by judicial application of bombs. The WMD and terrorism links are totally unproven as well.) Americans still consider him to be a good ruler and he's still ahead in the polls.

My suggestion to the Democratic party: send him a cute intern. I don't know what type of women Texans like, but I'm sure you can figure it out. Zara guarantees the results.

A New Speak

2004-09-27T05:23:00.000-07:00

An old idea I had came back to my mind. Instead of working on botchy translation schemes for webpages, we could build them in a made-up language that'd be easier to translate -to- normal human languages. Something like this:

is(I,a(banana))

or, extended:

is(subject=I,object=a(banana))

which would translate to, obviously,

I am a banana.

Or in German,

Ich bin ein Banane.

Or Portuguese!

Eu sou uma banana.

Less Germanic languages would probably require some research, but I think it could be done.

Right now the language that's more likely to work like this is Lojban, and Lojban has too much effort on making it speakable. We don't want speakable, we want typeable.

On Transportation

2004-09-22T07:15:00.000-07:00

Having lost the car temporarily, I consider transportation alternatives. This being a wonderful world of freedom of choice, you can choose any vehicle you want, provided it's either a car or a motorcycle. Personally, I think a lot of people would be better off with a motorcycle - look around the street when driving and check just how many cars have more than one person in them. (May vary according to time and location.) But motorcycles are, of course, associated with breaking bones and various other gruesome incidents, not at all related to the fact car drivers and motorcycle drivers do not respect each other at all.

So, the alternatives are a four-seat gas-guzzling monster (All cars are gas guzzling monsters. Take a moment and consider how much you spent on gas last month.) or a two-wheel frame designed to rub your body against hard surfaces. (And don't even think of getting a Vespa or similar less road-racing bike. We don't want you to look STUPID now, do we? What will the other drivers THINK?)

Maybe I'll buy a helicopter.